Having turkey on the Thanksgiving table is almost sacrosanct. What would the holiday be without it? But having duck? Sounds like something you’d hear from a quack. But Joey Jurgielewicz hopes you’ll give it a try.

“It is all dark meat. So, it is a great alternative. Very easy to cook and, depending on size, the average-size duck is only 6 pounds,” says Joey, the fourth generation of his family that’s worked to bring gourmet duck meat to the mainstream.

Joey is director of business development for Joe Jurgielewicz and Son duck farm, which processes 6 million ducks a year from its home base in Hamburg, Pa.

The ducks raised here aren’t just any duck. The farm’s claim to fame is raising “America’s tastiest duck.”

How do they do it? Sticking with what works and adjusting things to give people what they want. “We’ve never changed it. The duck is typically fatter than a turkey or a chicken, but we bred our ducks in the 1980s to get rid of the fat and to get rid of that duck taste,” Joey says. “Our duck eats more like a ribeye compared to a filet.”

The farm raises Pekin duck — not to be confused with Peking, the dish that originated in China. It is a white-feathered duck that, not surprisingly, comes from China, but it has a mild, moist flavor compared to more gamey duck breeds.

Joey’s family started raising ducks on Long Island. His great-grandfather started the original farm in 1933; it was in business until the 1970s.

When Joey’s father, Joe Jr., left for college in the late 1970s, the farm was sold and the family exited the business.

But Joe Jr.’s love of raising ducks didn’t die with the farm. In 1983, after graduating vet school, he and his father, Joe Sr., bought a 500-acre plot of land near Hamburg, Pa.

The lineage of the Pekin duck goes back to the farm’s original breeding stock from Long Island. The ducks are fed a mostly corn grain diet, with access to feed and water each day. Depending on time of year, a typical duck takes six to seven weeks to reach the slaughter weight of 7.5 to 8 pounds.

“It is very similar to methods on poultry farms,” Joey says. “But we’ve retrofitted feeding and watering systems. The biggest difference is the watering systems. Since ducks are a waterfowl and enjoy playing in water and around water, we added a lot of baths in the duck houses so the ducks can enjoy open water instead of just coming from a nipple line, which we still do have both.”

Bird flu changes everything

Since its start in 1983, the farm has always been vertically integrated. All duck raising, processing and packaging was done in one location, in Hamburg, except for a handful of contract growers.

But two years ago, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza changed everything. “We lost more than 1 million ducks, and we no longer raise the ducks here,” Joey says. “It opened up our eyes, and we created a lot of new biosecurity techniques and ways of farming.”

For a time, the ducks were raised at a sister duck farm, Culver Duck Farm in Indiana, which the family bought in the 2010s. Now, they rely on 30 contract growers to breed and raise ducks to slaughter age.

In the breeding barns, all breeding is done naturally. Eggs are collected and hatched at the Hamburg processing site. Hatched ducklings are then sent to contract growers, most of whom have two grow-out barns, some three. A flock is 7,500 ducks.

The ducks are processed and packaged at the Hamburg location. Around 80% are processed whole; head on and feet on for the Asian market, or head off and feet off for retail and high-end distributors. They also process parts such as duck breast, duck legs and duck wings.

Conquering the ‘fear factor’

But as much as Peking duck is a prized delicacy in Asian culture, duck meat is still a relatively niche business.

Joey says a lot of that has to do with the “fear factor” of eating duck; an animal most people aren’t used to eating. He is trying to change that.

“A lot of it is lack of education in ducks. People were scared of it or had a bad experience with it, but it’s actually a very easy product to cook,” he says.

He’s helped roll out products designed to replace beef, chicken or pork in well-known dishes with duck meat. Duck carnitas anyone? Developed by a Mexican chef who consults for the company in Cancun, it replaces the traditional pork with precooked pulled duck.

On the company’s website, you can find duck sticks, duck sausage and even duck bacon, along with whole ducks, parts and meal kits. When COVID-19 hit, people couldn’t get the traditional Peking duck in an Asian barbecue shop. So, they developed a Peking duck meal kit.

Through dry aging, they were able to pack a boned-out duck with all the fixings for a Peking duck meal. After 35 minutes in the oven, a customer could indulge in a traditional Peking duck dinner.

About 80% of their ducks get sold to high-end Asian restaurants, or barbeque shops in Chinatowns along the East Coast. The company’s core Asian market grows 2% to 3% a year, he says. But the non-Asian market, from restaurants to grocery stores, is growing faster.

“Our main focus is into the non-Asian restaurant world,” Joey says. “We used to just be a special thing. Now we’re finding that we have a spot on the appetizer list or on the main entrée list. And it’s just about getting consumers educated … and chefs educated.”

Around the holidays, duck can be an alternative or an addition to the traditional turkey dinner. And, he has trick for making your turkey taste better.

“To really help a turkey taste really good, rendered duck fat is a great, great ingredient. You can stuff the cavity of turkey with that,” Joey says. “People are becoming more aware of duck and are able to add it to their table.”