Duck Confit
Christmas Recipes French Meat Dishes Pickles and Canned Duck and Goose
Confit is one of the oldest methods of preserving meat. While the French prefer to preserve duck or goose legs this way, Romanians prefer pork. You probably remember the pork and sausages preserved in lard from grandmother's pantry.
It's very convenient to have meat prepared this way. You can add it to a gourmet salad (see the salad here) or prepare a side dish to go with it (see the duck with red cabbage recipe) and dinner is ready. But all that in a future post...
For this recipe, I followed some of Thomas Keller's tips.
Ingredients
2 duck legs
500g duck fat
2-3 garlic cloves
Green salt (herb salt)
40g coarse salt
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
1 generous sprig of thyme
6 sprigs parsley
1 bay leaf (or 1/4 teaspoon bay leaf powder)
a few rosemary needles (optional)
How to prepare duck confit
- Put all the ingredients for the green salt in a food processor. Blend until you get a green salt. This amount is enough for 5 legs.
- Clean the duck legs of the fat around the edges (don't throw this away - it can be rendered over low heat to get duck fat). Cut the skin from the bone (clean the tendons in that area for a nicer final appearance).
- Wash the legs well and pat dry with paper towels. Then sprinkle about a tablespoon of green salt on each leg and massage it well on all sides. Place on a plate with the skin side down, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
- The next day, rinse the legs to remove excess salt and pat dry with paper towels.
- Place the legs in a heat-resistant pan (not too large, just big enough to fit the legs). Cover the legs with melted fat (500g was enough for me). Add the peeled garlic cloves to the fat.
- Put the pan in the oven at a low temperature. Ideally, set the oven between 90-100°C. If your oven has these temperatures, set it this way (the meat will have a nicer color and be juicier). My oven only goes as low as 130°C, so I put a wooden spoon handle in the door to keep it ajar and managed to get a temperature of 120°C.
- Keep the legs in the oven until you can insert a fork easily (the meat is very tender). At my temperature setting (120°C) it took 3 hours; if you set it at 90-100°C, it will take longer, but it's worth it.
- Remove the pan from the oven and once cooled, put it in the refrigerator. The fat will solidify and the legs will keep for weeks preserved this way.
- When you want to use them, take out the container with fat and let it come to room temperature a bit. Remove the legs from the fat (gently so you don't break them), clean off the excess fat with a knife, then either fry them in a covered pan over low heat until the skin is crispy, or warm them in the oven.
Duck legs rubbed with green salt
