Why Duck Confit is the Ultimate Culinary Delight

If you're serious about cooking, then duck confit is an absolute staple recipe and procedure that you should know how to do. The ancient preservation technique of confit was made famous in Gascony, France, where duck was salted, covered, and cooked in its own fat to help seal it in from oxidation, allowing it to last for several months. The flavor? Incredible. And the beautiful thing is, once you learn this process, it will open up your kitchen to a whole new world of creativity. As usual, we're going to start by knocking out some prep. Sound good? Let's cook. I've got two whole ducks weighing in between four and a half and five pounds each. If your local butcher shop offers duck, all you actually need are the legs, which are the thigh and drums intact. But it can be more economical to purchase a whole bird, especially if you want to use other cuts. If you're buying it frozen, be sure to thaw it and remove the neck and giblets. The best knife to use to fabricate this duck is going to be a boning knife, although a French or chef knife will work perfectly. And now to break down this bird, it's very much like a chicken. We have our wings, we have our breasts, and we have our drum and thigh. We are gonna slice in between the breasts and the drum, exposing the meat. And immediately you'll notice how thick the duck skin is on the outside. So once we've sliced down, we're going to pop open that thigh joint. And all we really wanna do is carve in between it. So to do this, you're going to need to flip the bird over to expose it a little bit more. See it right here. Just cut in between both bones and slice through until you have the thigh completely removed like this. This is also the exact same way you would fabricate a chicken, just like in my arroz con pollo video. So leaving the thigh and drum intact, repeat the process with this duck and then the other duck so that you have four total legs. Now for the breast. While I'm not going to use this in this recipe, I wanna show you how to break it down. It's just like a chicken. Find the sternum bone and then slice on the side of it, carving against the bone, exposing and removing as much meat as possible. Now you're going to run into that wing bone here. What we're gonna do is pop it open and carve right in between the joints and slice down, removing it so that the duck breast is completely removed. Now there isn't a lot of meat on duck wings so I'm going to remove them but not all of them because I want to use a technique called frenching. It just makes it aesthetically prettier. So we want to remove the flat and the tip so slice down to between the drum and the flat then using both hands pull back to expose the joint and slice straight through. Now right where the bottom of the drum meets the breast skin we are going to slice around in a circular motion carving around completely Then using your boning or chef knife, scrape the meat and the skin all the way to the top of the bone and then just simply slice it off. This is what a beautiful Frenched duck breast looks like. And yes, you could do this with a chicken also. And at this stage, you will have some wings and carcasses, which I'm just going to freeze for later when I can make duck stock. Oh, so good. But if you happen to trim away any fat, be sure to keep that out and save it because I'll show you why in a little bit. And really quick, not that you can't do it. I've just never personally seen duck breast confit alongside duck legs. It's sort of doing it a disservice because that duck breast cut is so tender. It's much better off quickly seared, served medium-rare-medium with a nice pan sauce. I've got an awesome recipe on my website that you can check out. Let's transfer our duck legs right to a 13 by nine casserole dish, and I'm gonna give my cutting board a really quick wash with hot water and soap because, well, raw duck was on it. Next, I'm going to season both sides with coarse salt. When seasoning, be about a foot away so that you can cover as much surface area as possible. Then let's break out our pepper and we're gonna give it a light dusting. Then we're gonna add on about four to five thyme sprigs on the bottom side to each duck leg. Then I have two total bay leaves, which I'm going to crumple up and evenly sprinkle on between these four duck legs. we're next gonna smash a total of eight garlic cloves we're gonna add four of the smashed garlic cloves to this side and then i'm just gonna rub it in a little bit with my hand i want to massage in those flavors make sure it penetrates deep into each duck leg then we repeat the process completely on the other side four to five thyme sprigs per top of the duck leg two bay leaves total between all four legs and then the remaining four smashed garlic cloves these look fantastic Let's grab some plastic wrap and seal it up tight. And Comey's look. Rarely do things in cooking need to be absolutely perfect. In fact, I think this can deter folks from not enjoying the cooking process at all. It creates stress and anxiety like, oh my goodness, what if that one extra garlic clove is too much? Or I'm one thyme sprig shy, is it going to ruin anything? That's why I always encourage you to practice the art of cooking over and over and over again so that you can learn these things over time and start engaging with the ingredients and the products. That's why I always tell you, taste the sauce. Where's it at in the steps of procedures? Does it need anything else? Or smell the fresh thyme before you put it in with the duck. Get those sensories moving. Once you start doing these things, you'll start enjoying cooking a lot more. All right, we're going in the fridge with this duck overnight. This is sort of a dry brine, so while it's in the refrigerator, all those flavors are gonna go deep into the meat, making it that much more delicious. So after 12 to 24 hours while in the refrigerator, let's take our duck out. Everything looks as is. Okay, we're gonna remove the plastic wrap. We're going over to the kitchen sink, and we're gonna rinse each duck leg off under cold water, removing any of the thyme leaves or bay leaves. If there's a little bit of pepper left on there, no problem at all. Now transfer to a sheet tray lined with parchment paper or a large platter and using some paper towels, blot it dry very well on both sides. This will just ensure our skin browns up very well while confiting and searing at the end. Now at this stage, let's take everything over to our cooktop where I have a three quart sauce pot. The main thing is to use a pot where the duck will be completely submerged in the fat and they won't be overlapping each other too much. And next I'm adding in four cups total of duck fat. And to take this to another level, if you've got any leftover pork lard or even any searing liquid like from my pork chops video that strained, add it in there too. It's going to make it that much better. We're just going to turn the heat on to low and start to bring all this to a very low simmer. And please know, I'm definitely not blind to the fact that not everybody has a bunch of extra duck fat lying around. Now while you can purchase it, it's still obviously not a very common household item So some other great options are going to be a neutral flavored oil of your choice. I like to use avocado oil or a lightly flavored olive oil. Other substitutes are leaf lard or even beef tallow. Now, if you have any of those four, you can still make an unbelievable duck confit So what we're gonna do at this stage is season up our fat with some goodies before we put the duck in it. I'm adding in one whole peeled shallot. Next, in between six and eight garlic cloves. Then we are going to add in six to eight fresh thyme sprigs. Give it a gentle season with coarse salt and then eight to 12 peppercorns. Let's take our duck legs and add them in one at a time right into the fat, making sure they are completely submerged. That is so important here. And do your best to make sure they aren't overlapping either. Now, remember I said, if you have any trimmed fat from fabricating the duck, We're just going to add that right to the pot as well. That's just going to render out during the confit process and make even more fat. Winner, winner, duck dinner, I guess in this case. Fantastic. We are adding a lid onto the pot and then we're transferring it from the cooktop in the oven on the lower third rack. And we are going to cook it for four hours at 250 degrees Fahrenheit, convection off. But after two and a half hours, we are going to come back. What we're gonna do is just take the lid off, see where things are looking really good here, but to help with the browning process, to help get that Maillard reaction on the skin, that browning deliciousness, which makes everything that much better, we're gonna leave the lid off. We're gonna add it back to the oven and cook it for a further 90 minutes, totaling four hours. So after that amount of time, we are going to come back and have a look. You can see the duck started to brown up, fantastic. The internal temperature of the duck leg should be in between 208 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit. And this process is just so cool. It's like slow cooking in fat, except you're not frying it. You know this is crazy delicious. And these are good to go. You can serve as is, but... I'm gonna take it just a step further. So I'm gonna add about six to eight ounces of that rendered duck fat into a 12 inch frying pan over low to medium heat. Then I'm gonna add in the duck breast very carefully here, skin side down into the pan. Now I can't say it enough, you need to be gentle here. We're gonna cook it for maybe just four to five minutes or until it starts to brown up like this. That right there is flavor. That's why this process is so great. Once they're just brown on the skin, you're done. And you know the duck is done when it looks like this. It shreds apart. I mean, it's like barbecue. Can you imagine doing a brisket or ribs in this? Oh, amazing. And just in case you actually do want to preserve this, here's what you do. Once everything's cooled down to room temperature, take your duck legs and add them to a two-quart container, or any container where you can sort of flatten the duck out and it's not stacked up too high. Then take our room-temperature duck confit oil and strain it through a fine mesh strainer or a chinois. And be sure to give it a shake to get all that goodness out there. And the most important thing here is that the duck is completely submerged. That is key here. I can't say it enough. Then we're just going to pop it in the refrigerator overnight. That's all it will need. And when we bring it back out, you will immediately notice that there's an incredibly large fat cap on top. This seals in the duck. If you keep it in the refrigerator, it can hold for up to three months. See how firm that is? The duck is submerged. We're in good shape. Everything is under there. Now, for the fat that's in there, as soon as you break that seal, you maybe have four or five days to actually eat the duck confit. But as far as the oil is concerned, that will hold in the refrigerator for up to three months as well. Treat it like oil. You can fry things and sear things in there, or you can treat it like butter and keep it cold and finish sauces with duck fat. Now, how delicious does that sound? I don't know what to tell you. I'm just going to one little piece. It's incredible. I mean, my mouth is literally salivating after I ate that. And this goes so well by itself. Shred it up, put on a salad, or in duck cassoulet, one of my all-time favorite dishes. Don't worry, that recipe is coming up in a few days after this video. But you know what it goes really well with? Something called pommes Aligot, which is like half cheese, half mashed potatoes. It's incredible. It's really easy to make. Let me show you how I do it. I have four large Yukon potatoes, totaling about three pounds. What we're gonna do is give them a quick peel. Then we're going to slice them in half, slice them in half one more time, and then take thick slices. Nothing crazy here. Then we're going over to a medium-sized sauce pot with boiling water in there. We're gonna quickly season it until it's as salty as the ocean. Let's add our potatoes in there and cook them for in between 10 and 12 minutes or until tender. This is great because in the meantime, we can shred our cheese. Now, you can use a combination or just one of these, Fontina, Tome, or Comte cheese. You will need a total of 1 1⁄2 pounds. Really, the ratio when making Aligot potatoes Two to one potatoes to cheese, that's how cheesy they are. Another option would of course be mozzarella if that's all you have. We're gonna set this to the side. Let's go back over to our potatoes. And the way that I know they're done is when I pierce them with a fork, stand it up and it slides right off. Perfect. Let's quickly strain these, give them a quick shake. Then I'm going back over to my countertop where I have a food mill. A ricer will also work here. Add our potatoes, run them through the mill so that they are very smooth and fine. And of course, scrape off all the goodness on the bottom of that food mill. Don't leave that behind. Back over to the cooktop on low heat. We are going to add in one and a half sticks of softened unsalted butter, four finely minced cloves of fresh garlic, one and a half cups of heated heavy whipping cream, then about half of the shredded cheese. Now using a spatula, mix everything together first until the butter is completely melted and the cheese is starting to be integrated into the potatoes. Then we are coming back and adding in the remaining cheese. Continue to mix it with that spatula And once you notice that the potatoes are very smooth, you may see a little bit of grittiness from the garlic, no problem, and that the cheese begins to stretch just like this, you know you're in the perfect position. I'm just going to finish it with some coarse salt and ground white pepper and mix it until it's combined. Yeah, we gotta try some. Oh, gosh. That's just so good. I feel like all I've been doing is eating throughout this entire video. It's a beautiful thing. You know what else is awesome? My daughter and my wife are going to love these potatoes. So cheesy, so good. And the duck confit just shreds from the bone and it's crispy and it's delicious. And it will always go back to these classic fundamental cooking techniques, especially like duck confit. It always makes amazing food and even better memories, especially when you're around the table with loved ones. Oh, there's nothing better. All right, let me show you how I plate both of these up. Now, when serving duck confit all by itself, I like to place it on a bed of fresh thyme. After all, this is what it was cooked with, and that punch of green really looks beautiful on here. See that beautiful golden brown Maillard skin? Oh, so good. Now, for the Aligot potatoes, they will drip right out of the pan into a serving bowl or whatever you want. I'm not gonna garnish with anything. I think this dish speaks for itself, but if you wanna serve them together, place down a little bed of the Alago potatoes on a plate, put the duck leg confit right on top and make sure this is the hero. And one of the coolest things about this recipe is that it's really simple to make. All you're doing is submerging the duck in fat and cooking it in the oven for several hours until it shreds apart. There's really nothing more to it than that. And if you are an aspiring chef or are really serious about cooking, then this is a must-know-how-to-make dish. It is the very epitome of French cuisine. Now, if you like this dish, I always say that lamb and duck are my two favorite things to eat. You have to check out my braised lamb shank. The sauce for that, oh, it's incredible. I've got an awesome recipe video. I'll see you on there. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.