Confit is a one of my all-time-favorite cooking techniques. Confit, translated from French, literally means “preserved.” It was a technique developed by French farmers before refrigeration was available to preserve meat for the leaner months. The fact that refrigerators are a common household item and yet the confit process is still alive and well is a strong testament to just how delicious this technique is.
Although this technique specifically talks about confit duck legs, this exact same method can be used for any number of proteins, including beef, chicken, pork and fish. Although it is preferred that the confit is cooked and stored in the fat from the same type of animal frm which your protein originally came, Olive Oil or Canola Oil can be substituted in a pinch.
The Confit Process
Start by laying your duck leg and thigh portions on a sheet pan covered with a layer of kosher salt at least 1/8 of an inch thick. I like to mix my kosher salt with 0.2% sodium nitrite by weight, which gives the finished confit a beautiful rosy color, cured "hammy" flavor and can be left to "ripen" after cooking for up to 6 months. To make this calculation, multiply the total weight of your kosher salt by .002 (ex. 1,000g salt X 0.002 = 2g nitrite or 0.2% by weight).
Season the top of the legs with ground bay leaves and ground pepper (traditionally white). Cloves are also a classic spice used in the confit process, and I’ll sometimes lay a sprig of thyme or rosemary over each leg. Completely cover the top of the legs with more kosher salt (or curing mix if using), until the legs are no longer visible.
Place another sheet pan on top and weigh it down with some heavy cans or bricks. Place in your refrigerator for about 24 hours. Leaving them in the fridge too long will cause them to become overly salty and leaving them in for too short a period of time will not allow them to soak up enough salt for them to cure out properly.
After the legs have been allowed to cure for 24 hours, remove from salt and rinse vigorously under cold, running water. If not rinsed thoroughly, your finished confit will taste too salty. Lay out on a wire rack and allow to dry out in your refrigerator for at least 4 hours and no longer than 24 hours. This is an optional step but I find it provides a better end product by removing any excess moisture before placing the legs in the duck fat.
Once the rinsed legs have had a chance to dry in your refrigerator, place in an oven-safe braising pan or Dutch oven. Cover with warm duck fat and bring to a low simmer on your stove top. After the duck legs begin to simmer, place in a 200-degree-Fahrenheit oven for 6-8 hours or until the fat is clear and the legs have settled to the bottom of the pan. Once legs are done cooking, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the fat. When cool enough to handle, transfer the legs to a storage container and cover with fat.
Place in your fridge for at least 1 week and up to 2 months to allow confit to “ripen.” Although you can eat the duck confit as soon as you remove it from the oven, allowing it to “ripen” for at least a few days will give it that true confit flavor.
Serving Suggestions
When ready to serve your confit, remove from the fridge and let it sit out on your countertop for about an hour or until the fat softens. Fish out your duck legs and place them in a 400°F/205°C oven for 10-15 minutes or until crispy golden brown and heated all the way through.
A classic accompaniment is duck-fat-roasted potatoes. Just think breakfast-style “country potatoes” but instead they're sautéed in duck fat. I also like to serve my confit with a salad of bitter greens such as arugula and frisée. The slightly bitter bite of these greens helps to cut the fat on your palate and offers an excellent contrast to the rich confit.
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There are 170 Comments
You advocate placing a
Would this excess moisture be of detriment to the Oil.
Not any more than any other food product which would release moisture into the oil. But if you leave the moisture in the oil, and then raise it past 300F, the water will break down the fat over time, at a faster pace than if there was no water in the oil at all.
Would this excess moisture also damage the duck fat?
I think "damage" is a strong word. Over time if you heat the oil past 300F and get closer to frying temperatures, than the water will play a role in breaking down the oil.
Does all moisture gravitate to the bottom of the pan (water being more dense)?
For the most part yes, but as the oil ages, surfactants are produced, which allows some of the oil and water to bind. But a large percentage of the moisture sinks to the bottom of the vessel.
Does all moisture align itself with gelatin?
Yes, the gelatin is water soluble, so it combines with the water, sinks to the bottom of the cooking vessel, which creates that delicious duck jelly.
When you remove the gel, are you removing 100% of the moisture content?
Technically no. But you are removing most of it. Again, there will be some water actually bound to the oil, especially as it ages.
Will I simmer in deep fryer or on the burner?
Depends on how much fat you have to clarify. I always do mine over an induction burner, but I don't see why a clean fryer set to 250F wouldn't get the job done.
Would a deep fryer held at 250F simmer more effectively than a stove?
Possibly. I've never had to clarify that much fat at once to be honest, so you'll have to test it and see.
Not if the fryer is at 250F, which is above the water's boiling point. But when cool, yes, the water will generally sink to the bottom.
Possibly, but a better approach would be to get a clear container or bucket with a spigot on the bottom. Attach some food grade tubing to the spigot, and you can pull off most of the water fairly easily.
@ Robsous, Here's an audio
@ Robsous,
Here's an audio response for you:
The short answer is, you could technically do the confit in a fryer, but it wouldn't be a good use of your resources.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
C-VAPs are awesome pieces of
C-VAPs are awesome pieces of equipment and can be used for bagless sous vide. The C-VAP is a great option for your confit as well.
Where do you work that you have all these nice toys?
The only difference between a
The only difference between a C-VAP cook and hold and what you have is the Cook & Hold can achieve temperatures above the boiling point, with a browning setting, and then programmatically drop down to a holding setting, all without you having to keep an eye on it.
But the holding cabinet basically works like a bag-less sous vide, and can maintain 60C no problem.
If you want a more meaty texture, go 60C for 12 hours. If you want a more traditional texture, go 85C for 6 hours.
For wings, I would go 60C,
For wings, I would go 60C, and then play with your length of time. I usually do mine sous vide at 60C for 1.5-2 hours, depending on size.
Also, most family oriented restaurants don't have C-VAPs and Combi ovens; those are usually only found in large hotel kitchens or high end restaurants (which is why I asked).
But having these pieces of precision equipment will give you a massive advantage over your competition, once you really get your time and temperatures down.
If you want, shoot me a menu via e-mail and I can give you some ideas.
Yep, the rational combi is
Yep, the rational combi is prized but I only have the small 6 grid. However, cvaps would be in every fast food/fried chicken joint. No?
If they know what they're doing than yes, but generally they're still only using it as a holding cabinet. In my experience, most mom and pop restaurants aren't aware of C-VAP technology or how its used. So C-VAPs are usually only found in chain restaurants with a corporate R&D team who set up systems for using it.
Wait, 60C for chicken wings?
When I do chicken wings sous vide, yes, I do 60C for 2 hours.
Do you mean submerged in oil, in a hotel pan?
It can be submerged, but it doesn't matter, because the C-VAP or sous vide will bring the whole thing to 60C. But with a C-VAP, you can just put the chicken on a tray in a singel layer, set the vap to 60C, and then come back in 2 hours.
60C for 2 hours won't dissolve any collagen?
It does dissolve the collagen in the wings, that's the whole point of the extended cook.
Why do you advocate 85C for duck, yet 60C for wings? Please let me know
Because the collagen in duck is much more sturdy than chicken. And while you can do duck legs and wings at 60C, it won't have a confit texture. So my earlier suggestion for 85C, was specifically for duck legs to achieve a traditional confit texture.
jacob [at] stellaculinary.com.
Put Cvap at max on both temp and texture dial. I've an oven thermometer on the middle rack. I assumed 82c+66c=148c.
However, the oven thermometer stayed right at 100C, never went above it. I've had it for years and I never knew that. How do you know this stuff, do you have a cvap?
I've worked with C-VAP in the past, and have done extensive research on all C-VAP and Combi related technologies.
For your C-VAP, the two temperature settings are usually wet bulb and dry bulbb. The wet bulb setting is steam driven, and is what you use for sous vide. The dry temperature is to help hold crispy food crisp, so it gives your C-VAP a drier environment that's not so good for sous vide cooking, but good for holding fried foods.
@Robsous "Can you achieve
@Robsous
"Can you achieve the traditional confit texture in wings if done at 60C or will it still give a more meaty texture?"
Nope. It will give a more meaty texture.
"Is a confit texture desirable in relation to wings?"
In my opinion no, but you should make up your own mind on this. For me, I prefer a juicy, tender wing, not one that has a braised, falling apart texture. Again, that's just my personal preference. So 60C for two hours will give you a juicy, tender wing that's cooked all the way through. But if you want a confit texture on the chicken wing, then you're looking at 85C maybe 2 hours.
"I checked the internal temp and it was around 59C. Do you see any food hygiene problems with regard to 60C while par cooking chicken?"
No problems with food hygiene and here's why: the recommend internal temperature for chicken is 165F/73.8C. At this temperature, salmonella will be completely destroyed in 15 seconds. So this guideline makes cooking chicken idiot proof to prevent people from getting sick, but it also leads to dried out chicken.
But all pathogens operate on a thermal death curve. So salmonella dies within 15 seconds at 165F/73.8C, but it will also die in at 136F/58C when held their for 30 minutes (Modernist Cuisine, 3*99).
It will take maybe 30-45 minutes for your chicken wings to come to temperature, but then you're cooking it for another hour and fifteen minutes at 60C, which is more than enough time to pasteurize the wings and make them safe.
"Would heating up in a cold cvap breach these regulations as chicken would spend time in the danger zone?"
No, due to the answer I gave above. Time/temp abuse is 4 hours or more between 40F-135F/4.4-57.2C, so you will be fine. HOWEVER, health departments have been historically slow to understand the science behind low temp cooking, and you may have to submit a HACCP plan to your local health department to keep all of this above board.
"Dude, you need a wing thread. I searched wings and there's a tonne of results but all scattered around different threads."
I know, tell me about it! People are hungry for the chicken wing knowledge!
We're doing some tests on my end right now, and getting ready to release a chicken wing resource page. When I do, it will give a place for others to centralize their questions, but I'll also post all the links to the various conversations on Stella Culinary regarding chicken wings.
@BBQplaya
First, welcome to Stella Culinary!
"Anybody ever consider doing chicken wings in duck fat. Would it end it up tasting like duck or is duck fat a rich flavor applicable to anything."
Yep, I've done it. They come out great. A little more ducky than your normal chicken wings obviously, but they give the wing a really good flavor. We also sometimes confit our chicken wings in bacon fat. For breakfast at the hotel, we will cook off about 15 full sheet trays of bacon a day. We save the rendered fat, and then use it to confit the chicken wings.
Absolutely delicious.
"Duck fat is expensive so it would have to be re used many times. On that basis, even if duck fat works on its own, it will eventually turn into a blend of chicken and duck fat."
Yep, overtime, but the duck fat would still be the predominant flavor, unless you're making a ton of chicken wings on a daily basis.
"So in a nutshell,
Duck fat for confit wings?" - YES!
"Duck & Chicken fat blend for confit wings?" - YES!
"Also.... how do you guys make chicken fat. I read an article once about Mario Batali spending 12 hours in Marco Pierres place rendering some kind of fat. Is chicken fat rendering, a case of the slower the better. What temperature would you recommend?"
I get my chicken fat using two methods. First I break down the whole chicken. The skin trim gets put into one container, and then the carcasses are used to make stock.
The fat I skim off the top of the chicken stock then goes through a simmering and straining process to remove water and particulates.
The skin gets pressure cooked at 15 PSI for 2 hours. Then I strain and gently simmer to remove all remaining moisture.
Here's a thread where we have a current discussion going on about rendering animal fats and using it for deep frying and confit. I go into much more detail on my process for fat extraction, and the thread contains probably more details on the life of cooking oil than you would ever want to know. I would recommend scrolling down to comment #12 and starting there: http://stellaculinary.com/forum/general-cooking-and-recipe-trouble-shoot...
Let me know if you guys have any more questions.
My initial attempt would a
My initial attempt would a shallow hotel pan with the chicken skin in an even layer. C-VAP temp dial all the way to 82C and the texture dial on a low setting ... enough to generate a little extra heat, but not enough to brown the skin, which will hinder some of the rendering.
But I really think a pressure cooker is the way to go on this ...
@ J..weinstein, What about a
@ J..weinstein,
What about a commercial pressure fryer for par cooking wings.
Like, do them at 250 Fahrenheit for 10 or 15 minutes.
Yes, that will work. Just be careful, because the wings can become fall apart tender really quickly when cooked at 250F under pressure. You'll have to play with various times. If I had to guess, I would say start with five minutes.
Also, since a pressure cooker will raise the boiling point of water, you'll actually have less evaporation when you par fry and then fry again, which means a juicier wing. The same thing can be accomplished in a sous vide bag or C-VAP with a low cook at 60C, since that's below the temperature at which proteins will fully contract and start to push their moisture out.
And this pushing out of moisture can still occur in a pressure cooker if cooked too long. Even though the water isn't necessarily evaporating into steam at the same rate as traditionally fried wings, you can still technically overcook the chicken wings in the pressure fryer, causing them to dry out.
Would you agree that Par-cooking wings is about dissolving collagen and rendering fat. Surely a pressure fryer is best for this purpose?
I would agree with the first part of your statement, but while pressure fryers may be an interesting thing to play with in this regard, I would have to do side by side blind taste tests against other methods before saying the pressure fryer is the absolute best approach for par cooking chicken wings.
With that said, pressure fryers are pretty awesome pieces of equipment, and you'll be able to make some great wings with them. If you have a pressure fryer, you should also look at putting fried chicken on your menu, since that is arguably the best method for frying chicken.
Or would the pressure make the skin soft?
I don't think that matters. Once the fat renders out in the pre-fry, the secondary fry will be at a high enough temperature to crisp the skin. I think the main issue you'll have with the chicken wings, is that they will cook so rapidly, it will be hard for you to control their finished texture.
The purpose of confit is to tenderize,
In the spirit of this discussion yes, but technically, no. The purpose of cooking the duck legs low and slow, whether it's in oil, water, or stock, is to break down the collagen and make the meat tender. The purpose of confit is to preserve the meat. In modern times, the confit method is kept around even though we don't need to use it (since modern refrigeration and freezers work fine), but the cured, aged flavor of the confit, along with the hammy flavor the curing salt gives it, is the true purpose of the confit technique.
But please don't let me confuse you, I understand the spirit of your question. Cooking chicken wings low and slow in flavorful fat "a la the confit" method is a great way to tenderize the wings while adding flavor.
The purpose of a pressure fryer is to tenderize.
No. The purpose of a pressure fryer is to cook fried items faster while losing less moisture to evaporation. But yes, when the product is properly cooked, it will also be tender. But a pressure fryer isn't the only approach for achiving a tender result.
Yet I never hear confit and pressure fryer used in the same sentence.
It makes sense to join them together in this conversation, but they're technically very different techniques. One is a preservation technique, while the other allows you to quickly fry food while maintaining more moisture in the finished product.
@ BBQPlaya,
It's not so much that the browning skin will hinder rendering, I should have clarified this point. It's more an issue of fat rendering taking a long time.
So if you render fat at too high of a temperature, the skin will brown before the fat is completely rendered. But you'll be forced to stop the rendering process, because if you let the skin cook any further, it will go from brown to burnt, and impart that burnt flavor to your fat.
I know you're right. I just want to know why you're right.
First rule of Stella Culinary; always question everything. If something doesn't sound right or you don't understand it, keep asking those questions, doing research, and running tests until you truly understand it. In my previous answer I didn't fully clarify why you wouldn't want to brown the skin during the rendering process, so I'm glad you asked the follow up. You may have saved other people who are too shy to ask a question from fully understanding my explanation.
That being said, what is the ideal temperature for rendering skin.
I only have a domestic oven, what temp would you go with?
I actually prefer to do it in a pressure cooker or on the stove top.
For the stove top, just place the skin in a pot with about 2 inches of water on the bottom. Cover and heat over low, stirring occasionally, for about 3-4 hours, or until you get tired of looking at it. ;-)
Pressure cooker: tiny bit of water in the bottom of the pot. 15 PSI for 2 hours.
Either way, you're going to have residual water in your fat, so you need to bring the fat to 250F in a pot on your stove, and hold it there until it stops bubbling, which tells you that most of the water has evaporated. At this point you can strain the fat, chill, and reserve for cooking.
I bought a whole chicken to make chicken fat. I read that most of the fat is under skin, so I figure using the whole bird will give me the most fat. Is this correct, is more fat present on chicken pieces than skin from a butcher?
Seems like a waste of chicken to me, but that's fine. Also, while the fat is technically under the chicken, it is still attached to the underside of the skin, not necessarily the chicken pieces (although they do contain some fat).
What I would recommend is to take off all the skin and visual fat, and then render it as discussed above. Use the chicken to make a stock, and as the fat floats to the top, skim and reserve.
Simmer the skimmed and rendered chicken fat together to get most of the water as discussed above, and now you have a nice chicken stock that you can make sauces and soups with, and chicken fat that you can use instead of butter to make a roux to thicken your chicken sauces and soups.
Is low and slow best for rendering chicken fat, like would 140 Fahrenheit render fat?
If you want to do it in you're oven, I would add a little water to a heavy bottom pot, add the fat (or skin), cover with a lid, and then cook in your oven at about 175-200F. Forget about it for 6-8 hours, and you should have a pretty good result.
Will rendering fat from a whole chicken impart an undesirable broth flavor to the fat?
In my experience, no. Just make sure you simmer out the excess water as discussed above.
@ Robsous
Yes. The only issue you'll run into is the wings sticking together during the cooking process. This can cause the now very tender skin to rip when pulling the wings apart after cooking.
Would you do the confit in a bowl, a steel salad bowl?
Personally? No. But can you? Sure, if that's what blows your apron up. ;-)
Just be ready for your bowl to warp over time, but if for some reason you prefer a bowl over a hotel pan, it will work.
I've seen confit videos where they state the reflective side of foil should be facing down. I've never understood it, does that make sense to you?
Old culinary dogma.
Some people will swear that the shinny side of tin foil has relevance, but it really doesn't. The shiny side is just polished during the manufacturing process, as two rolls of foil are rolled past each other. For more info, check out the Reynolds Wrap PDF Q&A.
Be careful who you tells this too though. I was cooking dinner at my in-law's house once, and my fater in law saw me using the foil and chided me for not using the shinny side. When I told him it really didn't matter and it was a culinary myth, I think I shattered his Universe, and he still really hasn't forgiven. ;-)
I also have two foils in the kitchen, one which is strong and sturdy, the other is weak. I start from cold, so would strong or weak foil be best in relation to heat transfer and heat retention?
I have no true data to back up my claim, but I would be very surprised if it really made a difference.
Lots of questions here, so I
Lots of questions here, so I hope you guys don't mind that I answer them in audio format:
Press the play button below, let me know if you have any more questions, yada yada, you know the drill ...
Hey peeps, Another audio
Hey peeps,
Another audio answer for y'all. Let me know if you have any more questions. PS: I think you guys are getting pretty close to grasping all the concepts we've been discussing; I can tell that just by the questions you're asking. I think this podcast will really help nail down the subject.
I'll be around a little
I'll be around a little later.
Feel free to shoot me a question.