Nigella Lawson's Roast Duck Recipe Has Only 2 Ingredients

Nigella Lawson may have raised a few of her fans' eyebrows when she tweeted, "I'm not sure #RecipeOfTheDay quite counts as a recipe! It's just two ingredients that you leave to cook in the oven for two hours" and adding, "But what two ingredients!" As it turns out, though, she may have been a wee bit disingenuous in claiming that you only need just the two named ingredients to make Roast Duck Legs with Potatoes. While most Twitter users took Lawson at her word and expressed great enthusiasm for this relatively simple recipe, one commenter called her out on the description by pointing out, "I spy green so there are at least three ingredients!"

As it turns out, the entire recipe, available on Nigella's website, calls for five ingredients, assuming that seasonings count as ingredients, and why should they not? Lawson herself would undoubtedly admit that proper seasoning can make or break a dish.

In order to prepare the recipe for Roast Duck Legs With Potatoes that Lawson published on Nigella.com, you'll need not only two duck legs and two baking potatoes (or about one pound of potatoes in all), you'll also need a few sprigs of fresh thyme (the green thing) as well as sea salt flakes and fresh-ground black pepper.

Once you've assembled the ingredients, you sear the duck legs skin-side down until that skin turns golden brown, then you flip them and arrange the chopped potatoes around them in an oven-proof pan. Artfully drape the dish with the fresh thyme sprigs (you're no longer allowed to post any food pics on Instagram without the obligatory fresh thyme, or so it would seem), then sprinkle the whole shebang with fancy salt and pepper.

Roast your duck 'n' taters in the oven at 350 degrees for 2 hours –- you did remember to preheat, didn't you? (If not, shhh. We won't tell Nigella. Just roast everything a few minutes longer.) While Lawson does say everything should be done in 90 minutes, the extra half-hour in the oven results in duck that's "crisp-skinned and tender-fleshed" and potatoes she describes as "crunchy on the outside and divinely soaked through with duck fat on the inside." Sounds delicious ... though we bet that without the salt and pepper it wouldn't be nearly as tasty, and without the thyme it might be slightly less photogenic.