What Is Confit?
The word confit (pronounced “kon-FEE”) derives from the French verb confire which means to preserve. In traditional French cooking, confit refers to anything preserved by slowly cooking it in a liquid. Just about anything can be “confied.” For fruit, you would preserve it in sugar syrup. Confiture is the French word for jam preserves. For garlic, you use olive oil. The most well-known confit dishes in France are duck legs which are cured in salt before cooked in duck fat. Once cooked, the food is then packed into containers, totally submerged in the liquid. You want an impenetrable barrier to prevent any bacterial growth.
Confit is done in three stages:
- Curing the duck legs in salt draws out the water in which any microorganisms live.
- Slow cooking in fat.
- Storing them fully covered in the cooking fat so air can’t get in.
The cured legs are cooked for a long time at a low temperature which results in extremely tender meat that falls easily off the bone.
For those of us that cant spare 9 hours to confit our own duck legs they are available on Amazon.
If you like duck and fancy a bit of a retro recipe then try the duck breast with orange sauce.
Confit duck legs
Ingredients
- 25 g Sea salt
- 2 sprigs Thyme
- 4 Duck legs 200g each
- 1 litre Duck fat melted (or vegetable oil)
Instructions
- Mix together the salt and thyme leaves and rub into the duck legs. Salt-curing the meat acts as a preservative. Cover and leave to cure for 6 hours in the fridge
- Rinse the cure from the duck and dry the legs thoroughly
- Place the legs in an oven proof dish deep enough to contain the meat and cover with the rendered fat
- Cover the dish with foil and place in the oven to cook for 3 hours or until the meat comes easily away from the bone
- Leave to cool in the fat
- Remove the legs from the fat and pat dry with kitchen roll before pan-frying to crisp up the skin or pulling the meat from the bone in delicious slivers to be used in fillings
Notes
You may also like one of my other recipes …
