Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry Collaboration – Recipe by Chef Trevor Bird

As a person who cooks quite often and is very conscious about purchasing local ingredients whenever possible, I’ve always known and heard of the company, Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry. They’re known for being a local 5 generation family farm in Fraser Valley, BC (yay for supporting local businesses!) and a favourite among the Asian community. I’ve also seen many restaurants highlight the fact that their poultry comes from FVSP so you know it’s the good stuff when restaurants want all of their customers to know that.

I attended their pop up restaurant a while ago at Edible Canada (full post on it here) and I really enjoyed how they educated the diners on various things including the best wines to pair with white meat vs dark meat and how you can cook the most perfect moist chicken breast.

They have a new campaign called “Cook Poultry Like a Pro” where FVSP partnered with five celebrity chefs to create unique recipes using their local poultry. These recipes are centered around cooking poultry to perfection using techniques that are unique to each bird.

1. Chicken Cacciatore by Chef Clement Chan

2. Roasted Squab by Chef Connor Sperling

3. Whole Roasted Duck by Chef Trevor Bird

4. Roasted Goose by Chef David Hawksworth

5. Whole Roasted Chicken by Chef Alex Hon

I chose to recreate the Whole Roasted Duck by Chef Trevor Bird because I’ve been eating duck all my life but I have never attempted to cook it myself at home. Chef Trevor Bird is an extremely well known chef (he was on Top Chef Canada and is the owner of the Fable restaurants and MeatMe.ca) so when I saw that his name was attached to this recipe, I knew it was going to be good.

To be honest, I was really nervous at first. The duck was quite large and I think it’s just a type of bird that not many people attempt to cook for their families at home. In my family, my Asian parents would always just order barbeque duck from the butcher shop because it was tasty, fast, and easy. My mom would never attempt to cook it at home herself!

What I can tell you is that cooking this bird was surprisingly…. really really easy (albeit long). The duck was basted in a mixture of half sherry vinegar (I used red wine vinegar and it came out just fine) and half honey and that’s it! Through this method of basting every 30 minutes, I was able to get the skin to a beautiful crispy golden brown.

Because the cooking time on this was so long, the meat just becomes fall-apart-tender and it is truly one of the most delicious things I’ve ever whipped up in my kitchen. And because this is local poultry raised without the use of antibiotics, you can really taste the difference in the final product. It’s more succulent, less ‘fatty’, and the flavours are just more prominent. I liked the final product so much I might just cook it again for Christmas instead of a traditional turkey.

Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry is hosting a contest where you can vote for “The Recipe You want to Challenge the Most”! Make sure you go check them out and vote for your favourite. Also, click here for more details on their Cook Poultry Like A Pro campaign and here to learn more about the #BuyBC program.

*Here is the Whole Roasted Duck Recipe by Trevor Bird *

Disclaimer: this post is sponsored by Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry. They also provided the duck for me to cook with but all opinions are my own. It’s contributions like these that help me keep this blog alive so thank you. 🙂

Happy Eating!