Duck Confit - The Classic Method | Chef Jean-Pierre

Well, hello there friends! Duck confit! You've been asking for this recipe for a while, so I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell! Okay, friends. Well, you know, duck's got a breast and it's got a leg. And we can certainly cook the whole duck, roast the whole duck, but the best way to really eat the duck meat of the duck, the leg, is to cook them confit, cook them in duck fat. So I'm gonna show you how to do that, okay? It's a very simple process. The chances are, unless you live next to a duck farm, and there's only two, I think, in America, one of them is in Indiana, I forgot where the other one is, you're gonna get them frozen. And most of the grocery store have them, otherwise there's a company called Wild Fork in the United States. They're a national company. You get a small membership, you can get free shipping anywhere, and they're not expensive. So you can get them, you're gonna get them frozen. It's best to let them defrost 24 hours. So it's a long process, you know, making like, hey, the kids are hungry, when is then tomorrow night, we're gonna make duck confit. No, no, no. It's a fancy thing, it's not that big of a deal to make, it's very simple, but I'm gonna show you the right way to do it. And they're gonna fall off the bone, very moist, excellent, okay? So you get the duck breast, you let them defrost overnight, which is exactly what we did. So now they're defrosted, and now what we need to do is we need to get rid of all the water, okay? And because we're gonna cook them in duck fat, and we're gonna get rid of all the water. Now, this extra fat right there, I don't need it. Clean it up a little bit. So what I do is I just clean it up just a little bit, and it's ready to go. Now this over here, I rendered them and get rid of the extra, I got, I get the, I use the extra fat that is available. See, you don't need all that, you really don't. In a duck confit, you're not gonna eat that skin, but it's good to make it crispy to do some other things. You don't need it for this, so you want to clean it up. And it's very simple, you see, taking your boning knife and, and go like this, you see? All right, you're not gonna eat that fat, trust me, it's all gonna melt anyway. So, and the duck fat is a product also you can buy online, you can get it, we get, we get it here at Amazon. I mean, some people sell it, but very few, to get rid of the extra fat right there, you don't need it. All right, and now you're ready to go. So, so far that was pretty simple, right? Not, not much work at all. And now what we're gonna do, we're gonna put salt. You see, people say to salt it for two or three hours. No, no, no. You got to salt them overnight, my friend. And what's the purpose of doing it? To get rid of the moisture, to get rid of the water, so they're nice, because we're gonna cook them in duck fat. And I don't want a bunch of water in there. Um, I'm just thinking of, uh, is my hand clean? Did I touch the duck with my hand? You know, I'm gonna wash it really quick, because I, otherwise, you know what I do is, uh, I'll contaminate my whole container of salt. So I got soap here, I got dry. I don't want to go in there with my salt, with my hand full of duck or chicken or meat, and go in that salt. Otherwise, I have to throw that whole container out. So, um, I forgot what I was talking about, but it's not important. Oh, well, it was, it must have been important. I was saying something. So, uh, we want to definitely salt them. And now the purpose of this salting here, friends, is not to salt them, we like to season them, it's to draw the moisture, draw the moisture. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to draw the moisture, right? Salt, salt, salt, salt, salt, and don't be afraid to put too much salt. It's going to draw the moisture. It's going to season them, of course. But it's also going to draw the moisture, and that's the purpose of it. What I like to do is, uh, we're going to do it 24 hours. The first 12 hours, I put them skin side down. And the next 12 hours, I put them the other way around. I put them the other way around. And, um, and you'll see why, because the first 12 hours, friends, they're going to get the marks in it. So if I flip on the other way, it makes it easier to get rid of the mark on it. And that's all we're going to do. We're going to leave them like that in the fridge, friends. Same way you season your steak. Leave it in there. And with the process of osmosis, salt is going to draw the extra moisture out of there, and they're going to have no more moisture. And then when they cook in the fat, they're going to be amazing. All right, friends. So I'll see you in 24 hours. Okay, friends. Well, I like to do it overnight. As I was telling you, take your time. If you, but it's better to do it overnight, friends. I want to show you. Check it out. Look, check, check out all the water liquid that came out of the duck. Very, very watered out of it. See right there? Look at this. All right. So, and also make sure when you do this, friends, you do it on a rack so the air can circulate it. Number one. And number two, make sure you, you don't do it like an aluminum rack. There's some racks out there that are made out of aluminum. It'll interfere the aluminum with your chicken, your duck. Like I say, make sure you do it right. And then you see a lot of people, what they do now, they go and they go to rinse it. Don't rinse them. Just take it right there. Put it on a paper towel. And don't be rinsing. Look at that. Look at all that. Look at all that right there. Right. And then you take a paper towel right there, friends. All right. And you just dry them a little bit. That's all. And don't worry about it. Look at us. Look at this. Beautiful. Let me tell you. If you've never had a duck confit, you gotta try it. Let me tell you. Okay. Take them right there. All right. And make them comfortable now. Okay. I don't want you to crowd them. All right. Make them comfortable. Like, you know, like right there. Don't be doing any of this. Okay. Not this right there. Okay. Comfortable now. All right. There you go. All right. Now, this is good. Goodbye. What else do we do now? We're going to put a duck fat. A lot of people use oil to do the confit because they never tried it with a duck fat. Duck fat, you can buy in a container like this, friends. And it's a beautiful thing. You can buy I don't know if you can buy it everywhere, but I know, you know, I bought it. You can buy it on Amazon, believe it or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they'll deliver it to you, and it's room temperature. And look at this. Liquid gold, friends. Liquid gold right there. And whatever you got extra of this, whatever you got extra, you can put it in the freezer for 17 years. Now, I want you to cover the whole thing now, friends. All right. Cover the whole thing now. Now, be careful now, because duck fat is very fatty. No, no, very fatty. Okay. Like I said, very, very fatty. So you take this right there, and then you freeze this. Next time you need it, you got it right there, right? So what flavoring can you put in here? Not much. I'm telling you, not much. The idea is now, this is juniper berry. If you got them, great. If you don't have them, don't worry about it. Okay. They just, I had some bay leaves in here. Look at those bay leaves. They're on steroids. This, I buy it from an Indian market. We have an Indian market in Port Lauderdale. Look at those bay leaves. I've never seen bay leaves so big, but they're wonderful. What kind of flavor do they give you? You know, and it's only good if they're hot, okay? If they're cold, they don't do nothing. So here, they're going to be hot. We're going to put them at 200 degrees, 250 degrees Fahrenheit, right? And we're going to take a pepper. That's all. That's all. We got salt already. Don't worry about salt. A little bit of black pepper. All right. And then, and nothing else, trust me. You're never going to know anyway. This is just like an ashikwa. We're going to bring them. See, look, look at over there. Look at over there, friends. Look at over there. Put on the whole thing. There you go. This right there was a, this is a, what is it? This is six, six. I had six cups of it in there. All right. I want two containers. I'm just going to take it. I'm going to put it in the oven, 250 degrees for about two and a half, three hours until the meat falls off the bone. You can feel it. And it's the most juicy, the most delicious duck. I'm going to put them in the oven and I'll come back when they're done, friends. All right. See you, see you whenever it's finished. Okay, friends, when three hours went by, I want you to cook them at a very low temperature for a long time. You don't want the oil at the bubble. You know, you don't want to be like, you're not deep frying. Okay. It's very important to cook it very, very slowly. You see, you see a couple of bubbles coming up in the oven and then you know you're doing good. Okay. I'd rather you be in there a longer time at a lower temperature than a shorter time at a high temperature. That's not good. That's not how you do confit. Okay. Now what happened now is we're going to make them beautiful. We're going to turn them golden brown. So I got a fry pan going with a little duck fat. I took some duck fat out of there, friends. And we're just going to put it in here. And now we're going to go at a higher temperature and we're going to get them beautiful golden brown. That's some juniper berry pieces in there that I got. And all we're going to do now is we're going to get them beautiful golden brown. So I'm just leaving those over there because those I'm having for dinner later. So when you get a confit, friends, you can do a lot of things with a confit. You can certainly serve it plain. I like to put it in dishes, you know. For instance, this afternoon, I'm going to have myself a saffron risotto. I made a beautiful saffron risotto with the confit. I'm also, sometime I take the meat off and I put it like I'm going to do a duck breast stuffed with the leg confit and a fig jam and I'm going to wrap it with bacon. And I'm going to release that recipe soon so you guys see it. Because a lot of people are asking me all the time, do a recipe that is complicated and we really won't do ourselves. Well, believe me, this one is a little involved. Confit is not really that big of a deal. You know, you say, what's the big deal about doing confit? It's not. It's not really complicated. It's just time consuming. And it's like, am I going to get the duck fat? Do I have the duck fat? And so it's a question that some people are asking themselves. And now what do we do with the duck fat, friends? Well, after you finish, you can strain it because don't take the bottom of it. Strain it until you get to the bottom. Kind of like if you're making clarified butter. See the juniper berry pieces are right there. You can just take them out. You can certainly use that fat again, friends. And what I recommend you do is you strain it really, really good and you can keep it in a refrigerator for months. You can use it about two or three times. After that, it becomes a little gamey and I don't think you would like it. So here, all we're doing basically is just giving a little color. That's all we're doing is giving a separate little color because the duck is cooked. You'll see in a second, I'm going to take it apart, you see? So what I'm doing is give it a little color and I want to give it maybe a little bit more of a color. I don't need to do it on the other side. I'm just checking it. The other side doesn't need to be golden brown. It's the skin that we want to brown, okay? Now, be careful when you do that. Now, another easy way to do this, friends, is to put them on a cookie sheet and put them into the broiler and not achieve the same thing. See, because it's splattering and so we have to be careful. There's no water in there, but it's still splattering. So, and you see right there, they're starting to turn golden brown. And you come back over here. Look at the skin that unfolded right there. You come back over here. I'm talking to the skin of the duck. You know when I'm talking to the skin of the duck, we have some issues, eh? So here we are, friends. I think I'm just going to take it out. And like I said, an easy way, you take them and you put them into the broiler and get them beautiful golden brown because you don't need to cook it. All you want to do is just get a nice color. Remember, if you take them out and they're golden brown, out of the oil, you cooked them too fast. All right? So here we go. Look how beautiful that is. You see? Look how beautiful that is. You see? Now, you can make them more brown if you want, but I think that's pretty enough. Now, the idea now, let's turn this off so we don't worry about it. Now, everything is super hot, obviously. It's to show you what happened to the meat, friends. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab a knife and I'm going to grab a tongue. A lot of people also, they cut the top of the bone off right there. They just cut it off because they think it looks cooler. I don't think so. I think it looks cool to have the little knob right there on the bone. And the bone cleans itself up. You know, it does it automatically, so you don't need to worry about it. So look, all we're going to do now, friends, is we're going to pull it. I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you how beautiful. Look at this. Look at this, friends. Look how gorgeous that is. You see how it comes out? You see? Look at this. This is three hours and this is cooked to perfection. Look at this. Look how beautiful it is. Now, don't expect that it'll be like the color of the chicken. Remember, it's a duck. But look, look, look at this. You see? Look at this, friends, how it pulls apart right there. So in a risotto, you can certainly mix it with a risotto. What I like to do myself, you know, I mean, there's six million ways of doing it. I just finished to make that risotto and it sit here for the last few minutes. So what I do is I just take it and put it right in here. Now, you can certainly take some of that duck right there and organize a few pieces of duck in there. There'd be nothing wrong with that, right? Nothing wrong with that. The only thing I do is I put a few chives right there. Just a few chives. And then I take my duck leg, which is quite hot, and I just hang it right in there. You see? And then we have ourselves a beautiful duck confit presentation. Like I say, you can put the duck in here or not. Try to keep the leg up. And we're going to test it. Let me clean my hands. I got a fork. And this right there, my friend, is literally, oh, mmm. If you have never, mmm. My friend, if you have never made duck confit, I hope you try it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video. Subscribe to the channel. And don't forget, ring that bell. Like I said, we're going to use the inside of the breast, and we're going to make another duck recipe coming up soon. Thanks for watching. We'll see you again in the next few days with another fantastic video.