This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Not only does sous vide cooking produce an exceptional version of confit duck leg, it's far easier than the traditional method. There’s just something about making duck confit the traditional way, fat and all… I’ll have to think about this one! A few weeks later, I boarded a plane to Italy and didn't come back for nearly a year. The ziploc bags are great. © Stefan Boer, 2011-2019. ( Log Out /  What you do with it after that depends on the recipe. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. For deco i added pomegrate and cherry and created a bit of pan gravy using red wine and chicken stock. Open the bag and remove duck. Here, meaty duck legs are slow cooked in duck fat until fall apart tender before being finished on the grill until it … Place the duck breasts in a vacuum bag and add the duck fat. Hope this helps; let me know how it turns out. But one would be flirting with the very remote yet very deadly threat of botulism, which means that I can't recommend aging sous vide duck confit here or in my recipe. "Modernist Cuisine" is an amazing set of books by Nathan Myhrvold and a team. It actually also covers traditional cooking techniques.… https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/12/how-to-make-sous-vide-duck-confit.html This time and temperature is derived from our guide here. You will probably want it at some point, but you can start with ziploc bags. I browned the legs quickly in a very hot frying pan. Once the duck is cooked, it can be kept refrigerated, in its unopened bag, for one, maybe two weeks. You can substitute lard, a totally legitimate choice, but one that imbues the dish with a heavier, porkier flavor compared with duck fat. steaks cooked to a precise temperature from edge to edge, Unforgettable: The Bold Flavors of Paula Wolfert's Renegade Life, Bánh Tráng Nướng (Grilled Vietnamese Rice Paper With Egg, Pork, and Condiments), Yes, Dry-Aging Duck at Home Is Worth the Wait, How to Get the Most Dang for Your Duck: A (Very) Serious Eats Project. And seperate vacuum packing equipment, or do you just need bags? One of three tasters noted that the air-cured duck had a deeper, muskier flavor, which I also noticed (but I wasn't tasting it blind). The best were the 36- and 40-hour samples, which were difficult to distinguish. “Confit” was a means of preserving foods in an age before refrigeration. It can be gently rewarmed, then pulled from the bone, shredded, and blended with some of the rendered fat to make rillettes, or broiled or baked in a hot oven until the skin is browned and crispy, then served a million different ways. Unlike duck breast, duck legs are tough and need low & slow cooking to make them tender. I cook mine for 10 hours at 155, then broil skin side up: http://goo.gl/XidJIe, Thanks for sharing this! Well worth it. This small amount of duck fat is easy to obtain from cooking duck breasts, and like CampariGirl said it has a better flavor. Cooking the duck sous vide automatically solves that problem. ( Log Out /  Good news is Sous Vide Supreme is under $200. The transformation of meat is dependent on both of those factors, and testing all the potential combinations of heat and time can take...time. This recipe takes duck confit to new heights by using the sous vide method for moistness and tenderness along with the grill for smokiness. It came out great, but it was too much goose fat to keep. Sous vide cooking involves sealing food in a plastic bag, then cooking it in a water bath set to the exact temperature you want to finish at. Would like to share pictures, but do not know how via the plattform. Generously season meat sides with … The taste was great but a bit too salty, so next time I will use a shorter cure time for the same size duck legs. especially interested to see whether you;d give making hoisin sauce from scratch a go, In fact I did some experimenting with that last week, but it was a bit of a last-minute thing with a friend that was not properly documented for blogging nor properly researched. 18% weight in coarse sea salt. To make duck leg confit the traditional way, you need quite a bit of duck fat. The Modernist Cuisine folks actually did blind tests and even very traditional chefs liked the duck confit that was cooked sous-vide with only a few tablespoons of fat. SVS for under $200 sounds VERY cheap. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. When not working on, thinking about, cooking and eating food, he blows off steam (and calories) as an instructor of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art. I doubt that I’ll be buying any of the equipment anytime soon — I’ve declared a moratorium on small appliance purchases — but, if I do, I know where to come for information on using it. Rub the duck with the thyme, salt, and peppercorns. The salt had drawn out some of the juices, and had also penetrated the meat. I used to make it for my restaurant and also provided confit duck legs to other establishments. Now, isn't that something? It was OK, but I want to do it better before posting about it. Nineteen eighty-three! Do you see any reason you shouldn’t use pork fat? I'll take a piece of roasted lamb with a range of doneness levels over one with a micro-thin browned band surrounding a soulless, perfectly even medium-rare slab—a texture I find freakishly similar to that of crème brûlée—any day of the week. I haven’t done any side by side testing of sous-vide versus traditional, but I know that the Modernist Cuisine guys have (I assume you have heard of them?) To test it, I ran five samples, all cooked at 155°F for 36 hours. Best regards! Nov 20, 2012 - Thanksgiving is the most food-focused of all U.S. holidays, and much has been written about its traditional centerpiece, the turkey. The duck skin is frozen solid in a bath of liquid nitrogen, which leaves it very brittle. The big questions in developing any sous vide recipe are how hot and how long. I've also settled on a temperature and time in my own recipe that are considerably different from Wolfert's—mine is not a time-saver—and I think the textural results are superior enough to make an even more compelling argument in favor of sous vide in this application. Thanks, Conor. Funnily enough my amateur attempt has had more ‘views’ than anything else – 900 people have looked for and found an amateur attempt at crispy peking duck! I'll be happy to answer questions here tomorrow about the book or the review and I'll look in on the Times food … Good choice of wine, sine duck confit is a dish from the same region as the wine, and it has had some bottle aging, which works well with confit. In the end, my advice is to either cure the duck in the vacuum bag for 24 hours before cooking, or just cook it straight away without the curing period. It is possible to make duck legs tender with sous-vide at lower temperatures (i.e. Change ). Nice post, Stefan, and the timing could not be more perfect. Maintaining such precise temperatures sounds hard without specialized equipment…. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the vacuum bags is that you can’t use wet ingredients. I packed them into a big glass bowl, poured the fat on top, and left it to solidify in the fridge. The process is called purging and is used in curing of larger cuts like hams. Wine should be ripe and complex, oaked white or smooth red. This duck confit was one component in the duck confit salad, the French part of the meal. Duck confit, named for the French word for “preserved,” is a specialty of Gascony, a region in southwestern France where duck cooked in its own fat is … First I would like to congratulate on the recipe. I rinsed the duck legs with cold water to remove all of the salt, and patted them dry with paper towels. Rather than mastering the classic interpretation, the recipe in Modernist Cuisine flips it on its head by focusing on refining the flavors of a roasted bird and applying Modernist techniques. We cook a skinless duck breast sous vide until it’s juicy and tender. The main advantage is that you don’t need as much duck fat. Step 2 Set the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker to 170°F (76°C). In both cases, the cooked ingredient is completely tenderized (cooked in its own juices or in olive oil). Add the duck legs and sear until the skin is crisp. Blowing up the duck with a bike pump to loosen the skin was fun, though…. A water bath is not really ‘small’, so perhaps that could be a loophole in your moratorium . Try a 2-3 hour purge in cool water and let them rest overnight before proceeding so the brine equalizes. Apart from using much less duck fat, the advantage is also that temperature control is very easy. More than two decades later, Wolfert had an exchange with Nathan Myhrvold on an eGullet forum, in which he suggested the sous vide method for confit in particular. Some comments may be held for manual review. The 170°F duck, cooked for eight hours, was tender and delicious—just not as tender and delicious as the duck cooked using the settings that I ended up pegging as the ideal combination of temperature and time: 155°F (68°C) for 36 hours. To prepare the duck breasts, set the Sous Vide Professional to 135°F (57°C), with the rear pump flow switch closed and the front flow switch set to fully open. The most famous of confits, duck confit, was made by slowly cooking lightly cured duck legs in rendered duck fat, and then storing the cooked legs in the fat. I will try today if I can replicate your great instruction. Confit is a traditional French preparation to cook the legs low and slow in duck fat to make them tender as well as preserve them. Sorry I missed that part. Duck has been a problem for me, sous vide, as most references on the web for duck seem to treat it the same as beef which seems to be completely wrong. I’ve been reading your posts for ages but i cant remember seeing that one – ever consider giving it a try? On top of that, an immersion circulator allows you to cook at temperatures that are lower and far more precise than just about any oven, slow cooker, or other device commonly called for in more traditional confit recipes. At this point, the confit could be held for months on end, oftentimes without refrigeration; a cool cellar was more than enough. I believe the technique is a sometimes-useful tool with notable strengths, but also real weaknesses. ( Log Out /  What I didn’t have was a lot of duck fat or room to store a huge container of confited duck legs, so I searched for a different preparation method, which I found in Modernist Cuisine . (This duck fat was rendered from the duck breasts used for my recent duck breast experiment.). First, because it really and truly wasn't rotten; second, because it was as tender and silky as I could have hoped for. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. That gives us unprecedented control over the meat's texture. Or do you mean something else? Duck confit that won't ever end up studded with shards of glass, like mine. Preparing food sous vide is one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking and is often associated with expensive equipment and intricate applications. Masterful as ever Stefan. But the reality is that we no longer have much need for the preservative effects of confit; most of the confit we eat here in the United States hasn't been sitting around for much more than a week or two. I had not adjusted the curing time for the smaller leg size, which I should have because the legs ended up being a bit on the salty side. Or freeze you liquid ingredients before vacuum sealing. If you are looking for other inspiring sous-vide recipes, then check these recipes below: French/European ducks apparently are smaller than their American counterparts at 250 grams (about 1/2 pound) per leg, rather than the 400 grams (.9 lbs) Moulard duck legs described in Modernist Cuisine. How interesting! Incredibly silky and moist; completely fork-tender. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to StefanGourmet.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Pull-apart tender meat and ultra-crisp skin: It's not the most gorgeous roast in the world, but you'd be hard pressed to find one more flavorful. Sous Vide Duck Recipes and Articles. Instead of using those or frozen liquids, you can of course also buy a chamber vacuum sealer, but those are big and expensive. I followed the Modernist Cuisine recommendation of using 18% by weight cure mix (i.e. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy. I recommend the heavy duty freezer kind. To remain safe to consume, it should be kept refrigerated for no longer than a week or two after cooking, and then it should be eaten. This is what the cured legs looked like after 10 hours. The duck pictured above, made to Modernist Cuisine specs, was cooked at 82°C for 8 hours, before being chilled in an ice bath and refrigerated. Use a retort bag instead. Remove duck from water. I misspoke before. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours. Since this was my first experiment with sous-vide duck leg confit, I followed the instructions from Modernist Cuisine. Sous Vide. Salty or not, those duck legs look moist and delicious. For comparison, Wolfert calls for a water bath held at 180°F (82°C), and times ranging from five to nine hours, which adhere more closely to traditional confit conditions. I have a whole duck in the freezer and was considering, among other things, doing sous vide confit with the legs. You can now let them cool slightly and progress to the next step, or cool them quickly in ice water and refrigerate them until you are ready to serve and then reheat 12 minutes at 80C/176F.