Slow-Cooker Duck Pho

Slow-Cooker Duck Pho features delicious, rich, broth accented by bright, fresh herbs. It's a great use of leftover roast duck.

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My inspiration for slow-cooker duck pho came from a local pan-Asian restaurant.

However, their duck pho offering was actually hazardous to eat. 

Someone had literally taken a cleaver to a duck carcass, so the soup was full of bones. But it was delicious. The broth was amazing—complex and rich.

We don't eat duck all that often. I'm not sure why: it's fairly economical and readily available here in the US.

For whatever reason, though, we only eat it 1–2 times per year for Valentine's Day or Christmas. I usually make Herbed Roast Duck.

Then, I save any leftover meat, the neck, and the carcass for soup.

Making the broth for slow-cooker duck pho

To recreate the rich broth of my first duck pho experience, I put the carcass and neck into the crockpot with spices and aromatics for a very long, slow simmer.

I've let it go for as long as 36 hours—I definitely recommend at least 12 to extract as much flavor as possible from the carcass.

Because of this long simmer, I use a work-ahead strategy to make slow-cooker duck pho.

1. This recipe is written assuming you've got roast duck leftovers on hand. If you don't, I provide a simple method for roasting a duck in the recipe notes.
2. The carcass simmers for a long time: 12–36 hours. Make sure to check your crockpot to see if you can set it for that long. For example, mine only goes up to 12. So, I simply reset the slow-cooker a couple of times.
3. The stock needs to be strained. I also like to run it through a fat separator, but this is optional.

Strain the broth

After the long simmer, we have to strain the broth.

A neat trick we use for any bone broth is to scoop out all the bones with a skimmer and transfer them to a colander placed inside a bowl to catch any juice that drips out.

Then we rinse the bones with 2–3 cups of cold water and add the liquid in the bowl back to the broth.

Don't worry about diluting the stock: it's VERY concentrated after the long simmer because the collagen in the bones will have completely broken down.

Another trick that simplifies the broth making process is to do your straining and degreasing simultaneously. The skimmer I use is super fine-mesh, so I run the stock through the skimmer, straight into the fat separator.

The stock will almost certainly have some grit at the bottom. Sometimes—to be extra cautious—I'll run the last ~2 cups of stock through a strainer lined with paper towels.

Alternatively, you can opt to discard the final ~½ cup.

Because the straining can be a bit of a production, I often do this the day before we plan to eat our duck pho. In this case, I skip the de-greasing step because the fat is easy to skim off the top of the chilled stock.

Depending on the size of your slow-cooker, you'll get around 5 quarts of concentrated stock. You can freeze any stock that you don't plan to use immediately in freezer containers for up to 3 months.

Preparing the final duck pho soup

After that, it's a simple matter of simmering the soup with chopped cilantro stems and sliced shiitake mushrooms and onions. (Obvo, if you hate cilantro, leave that out.)

I add the cooked duck meat only for the last 5 minutes before we eat to heat it through.

I prepare the noodles and garnishes while the soup simmers.

Sure, slow-cooker duck pho is a bit more involved than a typical weeknight dinner.

But if you spread the steps over a couple of days, it's very manageable. Plus, this soup is totally worth the effort.

If you're a fan of pho, also check out my Slow-Cooker Rotisserie Chicken Pho Ga, Pressure Cooker Pho Ga, and Instant Pot Vegetable Pho Noodle Soup. I'm also working on TWO beef pho recipes, so stay tuned!

—xoxo Michelle

For more ideas on how to use up your leftovers, check out my post on Using up Leftovers!

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Recipe