Duck Bao Bun

5 Spice Duck Bao with Peking duck sauce

This duck bao bun has all the bold, aromatic flavours of crispy duck—wrapped in a soft, pillowy bao. Packed with tender duck breast, crunchy cucumber and spring onions, and finished with rich Peking duck sauce, this dish is street food at its finest. Perfect as a BBQ starter or a crowd-pleasing bite at any family cook-up.

This has to be our favourite bao bun we’ve had. Give it a go, you won’t be dissappointed.

Serves 4

Method

1. Use a steamer to steam your bao buns for 13 minutes from frozen.
2. Set up your Egg for a direct cook at 200°C and preheat your skillet.
3. Score the skin of your duck to form a criss cross pattern, with the scores about 7mm apart. These will help your fat render when you cook it. You’re only looking to score into the skin, not the breast meat itself.
4. Sprinkle the five spice over the skin of the two duck breasts.
5. Place the duck breast into the skillet, skin side down and cook for about 5 minutes until they reach an internal temperature of about 40°C.
6. Flip the breast over and continue to cook until they have an internal temperature of 55°C.
7. Take them out of the pan and wrap separately in foil to rest (don’t put them together as they will overcook).
8. You can now shred your spring onions.
9. Cut your cucumber portion in half lengthways, and use a teaspoon to scrape out the watery middle section containing the pips.
10. Now julienne the cucumber.
11. Slice your rested duck into think slices and load into your bao buns.
12. Add cucumber, spring onion and Peking duck sauce to serve.
13. Garnish with red chilli slices.

Notes:

You can buy bao buns frozen from most supermarkets and asian stores. They’re not cheap but they’re worth it. You can also make them, but it’s quite a process.

The shredding tool we used to slice the spring onions is brilliant. It makes the whole process fast and safe.