Make the holidays special with this Christmas roast duck with cranberry-orange glaze! Featuring perfectly crisp skin and a spiced glaze full of festive flavors, this roast duck adds elegance to your holiday table.

The finished Christmas roast duck on a wooden board surrounded by rosemary, cinnamon sticks, sugared cranberries and red flowers.

Why You Need to Make This Recipe

The best day of the year calls for an exquisite dinner, so move over, turkey and ham. Sure, you’re tasty, but it doesn’t get better than a perfect roast duck with crispy skin. Bonus points for a drool-worthy glaze that shows off this season’s best flavors.

While I especially love this duck for Christmas, it’s also perfect for Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve, which makes for a versatile holiday main course. The holidays are a busy time of year. Who has time to search for several different meals to feed the family?

You need a go-to holiday dinner that's great no matter what you're celebrating, and this recipe is it. Besides, once you taste how delicious and decadent this Christmas roast duck is, you'll look for any excuse to make it over and over again.

Related: If you love this recipe, make sure you also try my duck gumbo and smoked whole duck.

Looking down on the roasted duck from the side with rosemary sprigs in the background.

Ingredients

Here are the main ingredients we need to make this Christmas duck recipe.

Whole duck: We’re roasting one duck today, but we can easily make two ducks at a time. One duck is enough for three to four adults.
Roasting aromatics: This is what we use to stuff and season our bird, which includes rosemary, sage, thyme, lemon, onion, salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder.
Cranberry-orange glaze: We make this with cranberry juice, orange juice, molasses, ginger, cinnamon sticks, basalmic vinegar, garlic, cayenne pepper, salt and cornstarch.
Kitchen tools: Roasting a duck takes a few utensils. We need kitchen twine, shears, a sharp knife, tinfoil, a roasting pan with a rack and a thermometer. If you don’t have a roasting pan, a large baking sheet with a wire rack will work. We want some kind of a rack so that the duck fat has somewhere to drain.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Wondering how to prepare duck for roasting? Let’s walk through the process.

We first reach into the duck cavity and pull out all the innards. This typically includes the neck, liver and giblets.

Duck has a lot of extra skin with a layer of fat underneath, so we want to take two steps to address this. First, we cut off the extra skin on the opposite end of the cavity like so.

Using kitchen shears to trim the excess duck fat from the opposite end of the cavity.

We then take a sharp knife to score the meat by cutting lines in a cross-cross pattern into the skin without piercing the meat. This allows the fat underneath the skin to escape while roasting, leaving us with perfectly crispy duck skin.

Scoring the skin in a criss-cross pattern on a wooden cutting board, showing a diamond pattern.

Now we stuff our duck with those aromatics for flavor and tie together the legs.

Stuffing the bird with the aromatics and tying the legs together on a wooden cutting board.

From here, we generously sprinkle the duck skin with salt and place it in the refrigerator uncovered for at least an hour, though eight to 24 hours is even better. This helps dry out the skin for extra crispy results.

After the trip to the refrigerator, we're ready to roast. We place the rack inside the roasting pan and the duck on top. We give the bird a final rub of pepper, paprika and garlic powder and place in a 425-degree oven. After 15 minutes, we turn down the heat to 350 degrees.

The duck seasoned on a roasting pan ready to go in the oven.

At this point, we let the duck work its magic and roast to perfection. Meanwhile, let’s start on our spiced glaze.

We begin by whisking together cranberry juice, orange juice, molasses, balsamic vinegar and spices in a small saucepan and then cook over medium heat. The mixture will come to a boil, and we then bring it down to a simmer until it slightly reduces.

In a small bowl, we take a little cornstarch and mix it with cold water until it smooths. We pour that into our glaze and let it come to a boil again. This turns our liquid into the perfect consistency — not too thick and not too thin.

Now we turn off the heat, stir in the orange zest and set aside. In the final 15 minutes or so, we brush the duck with the glaze, and then we serve the rest with the finished bird for a decadent touch. Serve this Christmas roast duck with a side of brown butter mashed potatoes and you’re in for one memorable, family-pleasing holiday meal.

Bonus: For more holiday dinner ideas, try my Christmas chicken and crispy smoked turkey wings.

The roasted holiday duck on a bed of rosemary with cinnamon sticks and flowers to the side.

Expert Tips and FAQs

We need to make sure the duck is fully thawed before roasting. I like to give it two to three days to sit in the refrigerator. If you only have two days, I recommend submerging the still-wrapped duck in water to speed along the process.
After removing the innards, we can toss them or save them to make a great stock or even a duck pate. Your choice.
Please note that I specified not to pierce the meat while scoring. If we cut into the meat, it can dry out. This is why a sharp knife is important. A dull knife makes it a bit trickier.
I find it’s easiest to tie duck or chicken legs by first securing a knot with kitchen twine around one leg. We continue to wrap the kitchen twine between both legs making a figure eight. After several figure eights, we tie the two twine ends together.
Before roasting, we want to wrap the pan in tinfoil before setting the rack inside the pan. With all the duck fat, we'll be left with a mess if we don't cover the pan.
You may have noticed we use two temperatures. This initial blast of heat helps create crispy duck skin, but we don't want to dry the meat out, which is why we turn it down.
Official USDA guidelines say to cook roast duck until it reaches 165 degrees. Many world-class chefs cook duck breasts between 135-145 degrees because it isn't a common carrier of salmonella like chicken and turkey. That said, the legs and thighs are better at 165 degrees, which allows those connective tissues to break down.

Perfect Pairing

Duck is a rich, bold meat, so we want a beer with some body and a malty backbone. With that in mind, a Belgian strong dark ale makes a wonderful beer pairing with roast duck. This beer shows off dried fruit and molasses notes with a caramel-like malt that perfectly matches the caramelization from roasting, and the spicy yeast works beautifully with our fruity ginger sauce. For an extra festive touch, I recommend the Delirium Noel from Brouwerij Huyghe.

Feeling wine? I love pairing this dish with a gewurztraminer. This wine is highly aromatic, which makes it great with a rich meat like duck. The floral notes match nicely with the glaze and heighten the ginger flavor. A pinot noir is also a classic wine pairing with duck.

And, of course, it wouldn't be the holidays without a signature cocktail or two. Try my spiced cranberry bourbon sour, sparkling cranberry-ginger margarita, Sugar Plum Fairy Martini, sparkling pomegranate martini or chai-cranberry bourbon smash.

For one unforgettable, special holiday dinner, I hope you try this Christmas roast duck with cranberry-orange glaze.

Cheers!

The Christmas roast duck with holiday decor around it on a cutting board.

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