Why wait for winter? Dive into Dhaka’s dazzling duck delights!

It is duck season, period. Even if winter is nowhere to be seen or felt, the local kitchen markets are quacking up a fat duck show to tease our cravings.

Md Shujon, a 30-year-old poultry trader who owns Apon Broiler in Uttara kitchen market, said, "Waterfowls like ducks and geese are naturally fatty and have the presence of fat in their muscles and skin, which helps keep them warm while in water, and during winter. This is the only reason why winter is called duck season."

In Dhaka markets, there are two distinct duck categories, one from the commercial duck meat farms or chash-er-hash, as known locally. The other is the free-range local deshi hash.

"I get my stock load from Fulbaria in Mymensingh, where the local women raise 20-30 ducks and chickens in their homestead pens. They let them loose in the morning to feed themselves," Shujon explains.

Photo: Shadab Shahrokh Hai

Since ducks are natural foragers, they can find food like worms, slugs, roots, frogs, insects, snails, fish, plants, and crustaceans in the pond on their own. This natural feed makes them hardy. At the same time, ducks on the farms are fed farm feed or broiler feed, which gives their meat a tad too much softness. Our deshi palate desires the free-range local fat ducks of winter.

However, people opt for the grass-fed geese or raj hash, which are selling between Tk 700 to Tk 800 per kilogramme in kitchen markets in Dhaka. However, keep in mind, the prices vary daily. One such duck can weigh almost 4kg and can feed a group of 20 people.

Interestingly, come November, Dhaka streets are swarming with pop-up stalls selling chitoi pitha, which is practically a steamed rice cake, and duck curry. Every year, there is a new addition to the pitha condiment menu, spilling out of the regular mustard, chilli, or dry fish paste. For more than a few years or so, hash bhuna, which is a Bengali winter red curry of duck dunked in mustard oil and cooked in assorted spices and coconut milk, has become an exotic side dish to the bland chitoi and is found by the roadside on chilly evenings.

Mehdi and his mother Rozina have a makeshift food stall in Neela Market, situated in Bholanathpur, Sector 1, Purbachal New Town, Dhaka. Mehdi's sister Shilpi runs a separate shack with the same menu. They make chapti (which is like a savoury crepe), chitoi, and hash bhuna.

Photo: Shadab Shahrokh Hai

"On any given Friday, we prepare a curry of 15 to 18 ducks to cater to our customers," Mehdi reports, adding that it has become a mass favourite street food now. Just last Friday, he sold Tk 25,000 worth of this delicacy.

There are tens of such food stalls, each offering its specialty to the menu by extending it to fried tripe, offal, and kebabs. Neela market is accessible from the Purbachal Expressway and weekenders from Dhaka need to cross the Balu Bridge to access this very happening street food haven. And like a cherry on top, they have sweet shops offering hot roshogolla, and laal mohon.