Sous Vide Duck Confit

Many people are familiar with duck confit, but if you’re not, it's basically duck legs cured and then braised in their own fat. The key to confit is a low, slow cooking temperature and fat, plenty of it. The traditional method needs no improvement- salt the meat, rinse, dry, and cover with duck fat and braise until tender. But there is one key ingredient that makes this difficult for the average cook: the amount of fat needed to fully cover the meat. In a restaurant setting, this is accomplished by either saving up fat from rendered trimmings or supplementing with purchased duck fat. Which, by the way, is not cheap. 

At home, Rachel and I render all the fat and trim from our ducks and geese. Some years this means a surplus of fat, some seasons, like this past one, it means almost none. So to make what we have go further, we like to confit the meat using a sous vide (you'll see that we use this method a lot with different proteins). By using a bag, and removing the majority of the air in the bag, we need a lot less fat to get the same effect as a dutch oven full of fat. We usually add 1-2 tablespoons to the bag before sealing, or if we have a really fatty goose leg going in, we don't add any fat at all. 

We liberally rub the duck legs with a 50:50 mixture of salt and sugar and add herbs from the garden, like thyme or rosemary, as well as a few cloves of minced garlic, then cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, we rinse under cold water and pat them dry, place in a bag, add some duck fat and put them in a preheated sous vide at 167F for 24 hours.

When done, we put the bag in the refrigerator to cool instead of dunking it in an ice bath. This allows the meat to soak up a lot of the fat it's been cooking in. Confit is always better when it is allowed to cool in the fat. 

To serve, we either broil or brown in a pan, just get the skin crispy how ever you want. 

We served these with butter beans and demi glace. For this dish, I did some fancy knife work to french the bones and take the thigh bone out and then wrap the skin around to form perfect little “lollipops.” This step is optional but yields a really neat looking drumstick.

Sous Vide Duck Confit

Cook time: 15 minutes active, 24 hours inactive

Ingredients:

Salt

Sugar

Herbs

Garlic

Duck or goose fat

Method:

Liberally rub the duck legs with a 50:50 mixture of salt and sugar and add herbs from the garden and minced garlic.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Rinse under cold water and pat dry, place in a vacuum bag, and add a few tablespoons of duck fat.

Place in a preheated sous vide at 167F for 24 hours.

When done, place the bag in the refrigerator to cool instead of dunking it in an ice bath to allow the meat to soak up a lot of the fat it's been cooking in.

To serve, we either put it under the broiler or brown it in a pan, just get the skin crispy how ever you want.

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