Peking Duck

I was hoping to replicate a Peking Duck out of my normal home kitchen. I'm familiar with the typically prescribed process of air-drying with a maltose lacquer, blanching, light smoke, roasting. I've seen Heston's "In Search of Perfection" (including poor Chris with his straw), and am certainly familiar with the CS roast chicken recipe. I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions for applying modern techniques to get the best out of the duck. I'd like to keep the duck whole and have the breast meat pink and juicy. Should the bird be brined in the same way the CS team does it via direct injection? Has anybody tried the method of adding baking soda to the skin to enhance the Millard reaction?

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Brandon_34695

Putting baking soda on poultry skin is advocated by Ideas in Food book Maximum Flavor (Korean Chicken Wings). It works.

Samuel_68313

Yeah, but the baking soda is to help with the maillard reaction and brown it. The hardest thing with duck isn't so much browning the skin, which is relatively easy, but rendering the fat and making the skin crispy without overcooking the breast.

I mean as you can see from In Search Of Perfection it is exceptionally hard, I don't think brining is generally necessary with duck, but the process of roasting on an extremely low heat (perhaps even lower than the cs roast chicken), and then dropping the entire thing in a deep fryer at about 200c might work.