ERMAHGERD!!! (Duck Confit)
Welcome to this week’s installment of Fucking Delicious Fridays! This week I have a conundrum. How to categorize duck confit? For as you know, my main categories are Ridiculously Easy, Worth the Work, Shit you Need, Bitch, Please, and coming soon, Fucking Fails.
Duck confit is pretty simple to do. It’s a stick it in the oven and walk away to do other shit for a while sort of thing. The hardest part of the whole recipe is picking meat off bones, but even that it easy because it should fall right off if you look at it hard enough.
Still, it involves finding duck legs and probably special ordering them, and then you have all this glorious duck fat at the end, which should not be thrown away, but strained and used for other things. So for those reasons, it’s gone in the Worth It Anyway category.
All that being said, this shit is like crack, and it will make your house smell like the home of a fucking culinary genius.
Duck confit is where you cook the legs of (rather chubby) ducks in their own fat. Which is possibly the best idea anyone ever had, though arguably lands in evil genius territory along with sharks with laser beams on their heads.
Seriously, it is genius, because back in the days before refrigeration, this way of preparing and storing your game meat kept it edible all year long. By storing meat in the fat you cooked it in, it created a hostile environment for icky disease-causing bacteria. Those little fuckers need oxygen.
So duck confit is a practical solution for the dystopian future of your choice, whether it be alien invasion, zombie apocalypse, or sentient robots. You’re welcome.
Plus, it’s insanely fucking delicious. Did I say that already? Well, it’s worth repeating.
You may ask, “So then I have a bunch of ridiculously delicious duck meat. What now?” The traditional use is cassoulet, a delicious French beans and wieners sort of dish (the townspeople will be sharpening pitchforks and lighting torches at the comparison…oh, well).
But if you have been to any remotely creative eating establishment in the last few years, you may have seen duck confit on pizza, in pasta dishes, in some elevated shepherd’s pie, you name it. One of my favorite restaurants in Minneapolis, Lat 14, has a pineapple fried rice that I get with duck confit. Fucking amazing.
One of their dishes inspired my absolute favorite-ist dish using duck confit: Pineapple fried rice with bacon and duck confit.
If you’re good, one day I’ll give you the recipe.
The recipe that follows uses the traditional French seasonings: garlic, thyme, peppercorns and juniper berries, because it was adapted from this recipe for cassoulet. But think of the possibilities! How about ginger and lemongrass? Galangal and kaffir? Oregano and dried chipotles? Garlic, orange juice and cinnamon….Hold the phone. Duck carnitas? Sounds like a future Fucking Delicious Fridays installment!
Shit You Need
6 duck legs, Pekin, Moulard or Rohan. I am being difficult here, because the place I order from typically sells in packs of 4. But 6 legs fit best in my baking dish, so that’s how I am writing the recipe. Figure it out.
6 Tbs kosher salt
Several sprigs of thyme
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 Tbs peppercorns. I use my Special Pepper for duck confit - it’s a Madagascan wild pepper called voatsiperifery. You can use regular peppercorns if you want, but if you have your own Special Pepper, this is the time to use it.
1 tsp dried juniper berries. Optional, I guess, but I think it really adds something.
Aromatic herb and spices for the bottom of your pan.
Keep Calm and justeffingcook
Day One:
Yes, this is a multi-day recipe. It’s not hard, it just takes planning. Quit whining.
Prick the skin of each duck leg in a dozen or so places with the tip of a paring knife. This helps the salt penetrate, and later will help the fat render from the skin.
Holding it in or over the bowl/dish it’s going to rest overnight in, sprinkle with 1 Tbs of kosher salt, back and front. Massage it in a bit. Place the leg in the bowl/dish.
Repeat with the remaining duck legs, tiling/stacking/nestling them in the dish.
Cover with plastic wrap, placing it down in the bowl right on top of the legs.
Place a plate or bowl on top of the covered legs, and put something on top to weigh it down - soup cans, grandma’s china, whatever.
Place in the refrigerator to rest between 12 and 24 hours. Don’t let it go days and days, or you will wind up with super salty duck jerky.
Salted and nestled and ready to chill… Dude. Chill.
Day 2:
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place the peppercorns, juniper berries, thyme and garlic in the bottom of a roasting pan. A 9x13 Pyrex baking pan works great here. If you have 2 of them, even better. You can use the second one to weigh down the first while the duck roasts.
Rinse the duck legs well and place in the pan, skin side down.
Cover with foil, and place something on top of the foil to weigh the whole business down - another baking dish, a cast iron pan, your worries and responsibilities (as long as they are oven-safe).
Place in the oven and walk away for two hours. Doesn’t it feel good to leave your worries and responsibilities behind, even for two hours?
Pull from the oven, remove the weighty object and foil, and flip the legs skin-side up. Place back in the oven to roast uncovered for 2 - 2 1/2 hours. The skin will be golden and the meat will have pulled away from the drumstick end.
Let rest at room temperature until cool enough to handle, then go for it. Pull the meat off the bones. Save the skin for duck chicharrones if desired.
Everything that’s left in the pan is: 1. duck stock 2. duck fat and 3. garbage. Pour it through a fine mesh strainer to eliminate the garbage.
For what remains, strain the top (fat) again, this time adding a square of cheesecloth to the strainer so that you get a lovely jar of golden duck fat without any floaties. Be careful to leave behind all the liquid at the bottom. That stock can be saved separately and used to flavor the next soup you make.
Hooray! You now have duck confit, a little stock, and duck fat. Make yourself some duck fat fried potatoes to celebrate!
After roasting for the first 2 hours, most of the fat from the skin is in the bottom of the pan.
After it’s all said and done: 1. Stock, 2. fat, and 3. garbage.
The sexiest pint of fat you’ll see anywhere.
