Duck Confit

Wait…this is slow cooked in a vat of fat? WHAAAT?

When our boys were six and nine, my bride and I took them out to a new restaurant in town. The waiter asked if we needed children’s menus. My eldest looked suspicious and asked the waiter if there was duck on the children’s menu. My younger son said he already knew he wanted the salmon. The waiter looked at them as if they were aliens. I was so proud.

Every Christmas (for my boys) I like to make a salad of frisée, with lardons (big chunks of bacon) and home made croutons (slices of crusty french bread tossed quickly in a pan with hot olive oil and garlic then finished in the oven) and a lemony vinaigrette crowned by one of these babies:

Unfortunately, Christmas met Covid this year (asymptomatic, thank goodness) and we had dinner over zoom. So no photo of the salad, but as I had already made the confit…here it is. Next year, I will post the salad recipe in it’s entirety with a pretty photo.

So, yeah. Confit is a way to use fat to preserve meats without refrigeration. There is a similar technique (surprisingly also called confit) that uses honey or a heavy sugar syrup to preserve fruits. The simplest explanation is that when you create a sterile environment beneath a thick enough layer of fat (or honey), and then cool the whole shebang to a point where the fat solidifies (we will talk about the fruit another time) it takes forever for dangerous biota to penetrate the shield. An example: honey found in Egyptian tombs was still edible after 2000 years, if there were dates beneath that honey, they probably still existed. I cannot speak to wether or not they were still edible.

But does it taste good? Well, if you do it right, yes. Yes it does. And the finished product is melt in your mouth with crunchy skin and…incredibly free of grease. Here is what you need if you want to do a duck.

The potted basil is just there for ambience. The duck is the guest of honor, salt and pepper (a note on that later), the two quarts of duck/goose fat that was in my freezer. Depending on what size and shape your pot is, you probably won’t need so much. Enough to cover, basically. I use it all every time unless I know I am going to be doing it again soon, see my forthcoming article “Fat” for the reason why. A couple of heads of garlic, fresh herbs. I like rosemary and thyme. No reason for you not to try others.

For other meats you can simply substitute the meat, but I like to keep my fats segregated, too- duck and goose fat can mix for either bird (even for chicken), but I like to use lard (pork fat) for pork or veal, and tallow (beef fat) for red meats.

Quarter your duck-I usually only leave the bones in the wing and the bone in the drumstick. Quartering a duck, chicken, turkey, or goose is about the easiest thing (short of, say, cubing a boneless butt for a stew) that a butcher does, it literally takes just a few minutes per bird (a little longer for turkeys (they’re huge) or Geese (they used those muscles AND they’re big)). Bone in or bones left behind makes no appreciable difference in time once you know how. See here to learn.

Start melting your fat (low temperature here, we don’t want it to be hot, just beginning to be liquid)

Cut your garlic, the whole heads accross the equator and sort your herbs. Pull out the dry branches and petals and toss them, make sure there’s no loose soil or other foreign matter. No need to strip the twigs of lovely green, we will just toss the whole things in.

Now that theres some liquid fat in your pot, pull out (or push aside) what’s still solid, strew some herbs and maybe a few peppercorns on the bottom of your pot, and lay out the duck on top of that. Add the rest of your garlic and herbs, a few more pepper corns, and voila.

Remember, back when I mentioned salt and pepper and said “a note on that later”? Well, it’s later. If you have made this recipe before, using this fat, taste the melted fat before you add salt. The other flavors (garlic, rosemary, thyme, even pepper if you are using whole corns) will already be apparent but adding to them will only enhance the final product. Too much salt will doom it. You should be able to taste a little salt, but use your judgement. Put the rest of the fat in the pot, along with any fatty trimmings from the duck and any skin that you removed while quartering

Place the whole thing in your oven which I should have had you turn on to it’s lowest setting twenty minutes ago.

Now we wait. 3 hrs, minimum. In the low (175-200) oven 5 hours is fine. 7 is probably pushing it. I have discovered a dodge with my multi pot. It’s low setting is just around 200 degrees, which is a little too high for proper slow cooking; but its “hold” temperature, where it goes after the cook timer runs out, is a little over 140. I set the slow cook time to 1/2 hour, it goes up to temperature and… then it drops to a bit over 140 and holds for 10 hours. Awesome! If you are using the slow cooker dodge, 6 or 7 hours is great, 10 hours probably wont kill this thing.

When it is done, there are basically three ways you can go. If you are almost ready to eat, take the four quarters out and set them on a rack to drain, heat up your oven to 350-400, and then crisp those guys (see the first pic in the post for the desired outcome).

If you are planning on eating within the week, cool the pot to room temperature and put it where it is cool enough that the fat will solidify but there is no danger of freezing. I left it outside the kitchen door. What?!…It was December! A week before Christmas! My fridge was full!

If you are a re-enactor and want to play peasant from normandy who wants to preserve the duck for a month or so, then quickly (less cooling time is important) remove the duck and the good bits (like the skin), strain the fat, place the duck and the good bits in a smaller oven proof container with a lid, cover with the strained fat at least 3/4 of an inch over the duck, heat to 175-200 for five minutes, then cool to room temperature, cover, and put out in the unheated stone pantry behind your farmhouse. Anything that pierces the fat (can you see the end of the drumstick and the rosemary leaf in the photo above?) will act as a path for pathogens, this is why we strained the fat for longer term storage. In reality, though, this is not a chilly autumn in 16th century Troyes. If you want to preserve the confit for a long time, ziplock the quarters individually with a few teaspoons of fat and freeze them. As they are already highly processed, this will have very little effect on the texture.

When you’ve done whichever, strain the rest of the fat, and then visit my post about fat. When I write it. But for heaven’s sake don’t throw it away. If you had none to make this and bought a quart of duck fat you know how valuable it is in dollars. Processed properly, it will keep for a very long time. And every time you use it, the clock starts anew. At least a few molecules of my two quarts above are now pushing twenty. Next year, they can go to a bar in any state and order liquor drinks.

My missing salad notwithstanding, there are literally dozens of things you can do with this. It’s a necessary ingredient in another favorite, cassoulet. Alone on a plain white plate it is not too shabby. Maybe sliced cold (after crisping) with a spread including pickles, pâtés, and a variety of french sausages. Picked like North Carolina barbecue and served on toast points as Hors d’Oeuvres with a little bit of crisped skin on top of each…yummy, I am now thinking about making another batch. I have just made myself hungry.

Enjoy!