Last Saturday night, I decided that Sunday would be the day I finally made a homemade version of Zhou Heiya. The cooking itself turned out fine in the end. Buying the ingredients, though, was a complete mess.
The absurd part: trying to buy the duck
During the pandemic, getting groceries was already unpredictable, and duck necks were especially hard to find. Duck wings and duck feet were still available on quite a few platforms, but duck necks kept disappearing everywhere.
That night, the group-buy organizer for our residential pickup point posted a grocery link in the neighborhood chat. It led to Hema’s community shopping platform, and somehow it had everything: duck necks, duck feet, duck wings, even duck heads. I rushed to place orders for two portions of each. The app showed an estimated delivery time of 09.05 (Monday), 11 a.m., but at the time I somehow read it as Sunday at 11 a.m. I thought I had secured the main ingredients and planned to buy the seasonings the next morning.
So Sunday morning, I went on another app and bought a pile of spices and condiments:
Various seasonings
Right before eleven, I checked the duck order again—and only then noticed it was scheduled for Monday, not Sunday. I had no choice but to cancel it and start over from scratch.
For more than two hours, I kept switching between grocery apps. Most had no duck necks at all, and the few that did only offered next-day delivery. I found duck necks in the Auchan app at one point, but I made the mistake of wanting to browse for other items first so I could place one combined order. Just a few minutes later, the delivery slot was gone. That was infuriating.
At that point I lowered my expectations and prepared myself for making it without duck necks or duck heads—just duck feet, duck wings, and some vegetables.
I then started searching specifically for duck wings. For this kind of braise, the middle section of the wing is ideal, but it took a lot of digging before I finally found a few stores selling them in JD Daojia’s one-hour delivery listings. Because of the pandemic, delivery capacity was tight and the shipping fees were painful—close to 10 yuan per order. I picked the shop with the relatively cheaper delivery fee and placed an order.
Then came the quail eggs. I found two boxes on Dingdong.
But I still couldn’t let go of the idea of duck necks, so I turned to food delivery apps. First I downloaded Meituan Maicai and searched for duck necks, duck feet, and duck wings. To my surprise, all of them showed up. I was thrilled. After all that searching, I thought I had finally solved it. I selected everything, added it to cart, went to checkout—and only when choosing the address did I discover that grocery delivery service hadn’t even launched in Sichuan. That was like having a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. I retried several times, convinced it must be a location error, but no. I had to give up.
Then I switched to Ele.me and searched again for duck necks. Most of the results were already-cooked braised snacks. I kept scrolling and scrolling until I finally found a supermarket tagged with “half-day delivery,” with an estimated arrival time of 5 p.m. It even had duck necks in stock. This time I didn’t dare wait around and bundle other items together—I was afraid they’d sell out again. But when I went to pay, the delivery slot changed to the next day, 6–8 p.m. I thought maybe that was just the latest possible time and paid anyway.
Still uneasy, I tried to contact the store to confirm whether it might arrive that afternoon. I couldn’t find a phone number anywhere, only a “contact merchant” button inside the order page. That led to a bot. After repeatedly typing that I wanted a human agent, I finally got one. The answer: the delivery time shown before checkout was only an estimate, and if the time changed during payment, it meant the delivery capacity for that slot was already full. So yes—my order would really arrive the following evening. I refunded it.
By then, I had almost completely given up on getting duck necks.
And then, just as my dad was calling me to lunch, my phone rang.
It was the owner of a supermarket I had ordered from earlier. He said the duck wing midsections I bought were sold out and asked whether he could replace them with duck necks instead.
I was ecstatic.
I had spent the whole morning desperately trying to buy duck necks, and now someone was offering them to me because the thing I originally ordered was gone. I was so caught off guard that I had to confirm it twice: all of it would be replaced with duck necks? The owner said yes—the wings were out of stock, so was that okay? I told him that was more than okay and thanked him repeatedly. He was probably confused about why someone would sound so happy after being told the item they ordered was unavailable.
That’s how the duck necks finally appeared out of nowhere. Since I had ordered three bags of wings, totaling 1.2 kg, I ended up with a pretty decent amount of duck necks too.
After lunch, I placed one more order for the remaining vegetables. Because the wing midsections had been swapped out for duck necks, I also bought regular duck mid-wings separately. In the end, the only thing I failed to get was duck heads. The wing midsections got replaced by regular mid-wings, which was acceptable.
Here’s what I ended up buying.
First grocery order
- Cooking wine, 500ml ×1, ¥5.9
- Bay leaves, 15g ×1, ¥3
- Fresh Sichuan peppercorns (green), 100g ×1, ¥4.99
- Fennel seeds, 50g ×1, ¥4.9
- Pork bone stock cubes, 128g ×1, ¥9.9
- Dried chili peppers, 50g ×2, ¥7.8
- Star anise, 26g ×1, ¥5.5
- Yanjing 10° beer, 330ml, 6 bottles ×1, ¥10.8
- Duck feet, 400g ×1, ¥18.8
- Cinnamon bark, 30g ×1, ¥3.99
- Yellow rock sugar, 418g ×1, ¥5.9
- Sweet flour sauce, 240g ×1, ¥3.9
- Delivery fee: ¥0
Total: ¥85.38
Second grocery order
- Duck feet, 400g ×1, ¥18.8
- Enoki mushrooms, 300g ×1, ¥4.98
- Lotus root, about 390–410g ×1, ¥6.8
- Kelp knots, 200g ×1, ¥3.88
- Duck mid-wings, 500g ×2, ¥17.8
- Delivery fee: ¥0
Total: ¥52.26
Dingdong order
- Peeled quail eggs, 450g ×2, ¥25.8
- Delivery fee: ¥0
Total: ¥25.8
JD Daojia order
- Duck wing midsections, 400g ×3, ¥23.7
(later replaced with duck necks, and they also threw in an extra chicken drumstick) - Packaging fee: ¥1.2
- Discount: -¥2
- Delivery fee: ¥7
Total: ¥29.9
Things already at home
- Light soy sauce
- Dark soy sauce
- Cooking wine
- Ginger
- Sichuan peppercorns (the regular kind, different from the green peppercorns above)
- Toasted white sesame
- Potatoes
The duck items came to 3 kg total:
800g duck feet + 1000g duck wings + 1200g duck necks
The vegetables totaled 1.9 kg:
400g potatoes + 400g lotus root + 200g kelp knots + 900g quail eggs
Grand total for everything: ¥193.34
Finally, the cooking started
The recipe reference
I followed a video tutorial for the seasoning ratios almost exactly. The original formula was for 1.5 kg of duck parts, and since I had roughly double that amount, I scaled the ingredients up to a little more than double as well.
Defrosting and removing the odor
Everything arrived frozen, so the first step was soaking the duck in water to thaw it. After that, I added cooking wine and sliced ginger to help remove the gaminess. I forgot to buy scallions, so the usual three-item deodorizing combo got reduced to two.
Duck necks taking a “bath”
Duck wings and duck feet taking a “bath” - 01
Duck wings and duck feet taking a “bath” - 02
Prepping the vegetables
While the duck was soaking, I cut the lotus root into fairly thick slices. I also cut up three small potatoes, though in the end I used less than half of them. Both the lotus root and potato slices are better cut on the thicker side; if they’re too thin, they fall apart easily after braising.
I soaked the cut slices in water to prevent oxidation and discoloration. The quail eggs were emptied into water as well. I trimmed the roots off the enoki mushrooms, washed them along with the kelp knots, and set them aside.
At one point I suddenly remembered an old video claiming that if you put the trimmed root end of enoki mushrooms on a damp paper towel, they might regrow. So I got curious and tried it myself in a little box. Unfortunately, my dad cleaned up the kitchen the next day and threw it out before I could see what would happen.
Will the enoki mushrooms regrow?
All the ingredients together
Mixing the braising base
For the braising liquid, I followed the ratios from the video and simply put all the seasonings into the pot. There’s no need to add water—the beer was just enough to cover all the duck. If it isn’t quite enough, a little hot water is fine. If you happen to have homemade stock, that can replace both the stock cubes and the beer as the liquid base.
The braising spices before adding beer
Blanching the duck
Once the vegetables and braising base were ready, I blanched the duck in cold water with ginger slices, scallions, and cooking wine, bringing it to a boil over high heat and skimming off the foam.
This step matters a lot. If you don’t handle it well here, the finished braise will still carry a strong gamey smell. If you have too much duck or your pot is too small, it’s better to do it in batches.
Blanching to remove odor
Time to braise
After blanching, I rinsed everything in cool water to clean it, drained it, and then added it to the prepared braising liquid. I didn’t really wait for it to air-dry first. If you don’t like the taste of beer, you can use less.
Ready to braise
My pot was packed to the brim—almost too full—so honestly, making a smaller batch at once would be wiser.
I brought it to a boil over high heat, then lowered it to medium-low and simmered. If you’re using wing midsections, they cook the fastest and can come out after about 30 minutes. Duck feet take around 40 minutes, and duck necks around 50 minutes. You can adjust based on your preference. I left everything in about ten extra minutes to deepen the flavor.
The vegetables went in last and cooked for another ten minutes or so before I took everything out. Then I poured the remaining braising liquid over the duck and vegetables, let it cool, and refrigerated it so everything could fully absorb the sauce. After about three to four hours, I took it out again and removed all the whole spices.
Right after cooking, the flavor was mostly sweet, numbing, and salty, with barely any heat. But after it cooled, the chili flavor came through too, and at that point it tasted incredible.
Refrigerating everything in the braising liquid - 01
Refrigerating everything in the braising liquid - 02
Refrigerating everything in the braising liquid - 03
After a few hours, fully flavored
Cutting the duck necks
This step is optional. You can absolutely just gnaw on the whole necks if you want. But I was planning to bring some to my girlfriend, so cutting them up made packing easier.
Cutting the duck necks
Also, I have to praise the gloves I bought before for making desserts at home—they were excellent. No oil leakage, and they didn’t tear easily either.
The final result
I was worried my girlfriend wouldn’t have enough to eat, so I packed up more than half for her.
Everything cut and ready
The food in the disposable containers was the portion I brought to her. She doesn’t like sesame, so I skipped it on hers.
Vegetables topped with sesame
Duck wings topped with sesame
Duck necks and duck feet topped with sesame
I sprinkled white sesame over the portions that stayed at home. It looked nice, but to be honest it didn’t really improve the flavor.
Everything after the cooking was chaotic too
Because our residential compound was under pandemic restrictions, each household was allowed only one person to go out per day, for up to two hours. So on Monday morning I told my dad that I needed to go out that evening, and he gave up his daily outing so I could use it instead.
I set off full of anticipation—riding a bike to the subway, taking the subway, then biking again. I went to a restaurant first and ordered food while waiting for my girlfriend to get off work so we could eat together. But just as we were about to choose dishes, the owner told me dine-in wasn’t allowed and everything had to be packed to go. I asked again to make sure, and he said none of the nearby places were allowing dine-in; the fact they were open at all was already something.
So I went to wait for her after work. Even though we couldn’t sit down and eat together, I was still happy just thinking that we hadn’t seen each other in a long time and could at least walk around for a bit.
Then, not long after, a message popped up in the work group chat: there would be a meeting at 7:30 p.m. My heart sank immediately. It had been hard enough just arranging to meet, and then one unexpected thing after another kept getting in the way.
By the time she got off work, it was already 6:40. I walked her home, then found a shared bike, rode back to the subway station, took the subway home, and made it back in time for the meeting.
Still, on the way home I got her verdict after she tried the food: “Super great, super delicious.” That was the moment I finally felt sure that what I made had actually turned out really, really good. After all the interruptions and bad timing, my mood lifted right back up again. (≧▽≦)/