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
@ Jzuckerberg, You
@ Jzuckerberg,
You mentioned gradient v equilibrium par-cook before. If I par-cook at 250F as opposed to sous vide at 140F. I cannot really control the temp as I would with sous vide.
Yep, that's why chefs like the control that sous vide, C-VAPs and combi ovens offer.
So I par-cook wings at 250F for 12/15/20 mins Should I probe the internal temperature at each time milestone.
Yep.
In other words, should I assess when internal temp reaches 150F and pull right then and there. Like if I let it go past 165F etc, will it lead to dry chicken?
I would pull at internal temp of 150F; you're mileage my vary.
This just always confused me about par-cooking at 250F/275F, like am I supposed to go beyond drying out temperatures. If so, is that not detrimental.
No, you're not suppose to go past drying out temperatures for obvious reasons.
@ BBQPlaya,
At sous vide temps 140F-147F, Aim is to get past chewy point but finish them before you risk them turning dry/mealy/mushy.
Exactly.
Once they go past the point where they're chewy, how long do you have before the texture is altered in a negative sense, is it 1/2/3/4 hours.
I couldn't say for sure, you'd have to test. But once they're done, they're done, so why not just pull them?
Bad question, shaking basket affect internal texture. After frying them to finish, does an aggressive shake of basket have any impact on internal texture?
I can't think of a reason why it would.
You said that I'm basically cooking my wings in a highly flavorful chicken stock as opposed to oil. I get a tonne of jelly so is this the way to go? Would it be a better cooking medium than vegetable oil with regard to (confit/sous vide) in oil?
That's something that only you can decide through side by side testing and making up your mind on which one you prefer.
If myoglobin is so relevant to flavor, why is (confit/sous vide) desireable.The gelatin does be red which indicates that temps (140-147F) remove the most myoglobin from the wings. In doing so, they are removing the flavor, No?
No. You're mixing up the dynamics at play here. Sous vide does not remove mygolobin any more than any other cooking technique. The problem is, at the lower temperatures of sous vide, the myglobin remains red instead of turning grey. The redness of the bone and a little bit in my meat doesn't bother me. If it scares the people you're serving, you need to figure out a way around that.
Like would an extended sous vide lead loss of myoglobin and less flavor?
No. I'm not sure what made you think that sous vide removes myoglobin, but it doesn't.
What do you mean by clear gelatin?
In a previous video, you sort of implied that red gelatin would have more flavor than tanned gelatin, why?
Is gelatin best with regard to what type of sauce...Chickfilas polynesian, ghetto type of sauce or is gelatin best when added to a kfc style gravy? Would a red gelatin turn the gravy red?
The concentrated juices released from meat when cooking are going to be highly flavorful, and they also tend to contain gelatin, which refined into it's purest form, has a very neutral flavor. The juices in my sous vide bag are always flavorful because they're concentrated, just like the juices you find at the bottom of your confit fat. So it's the concentrated juices that's culinary gold, the fact that it gels, is because it happens to contain gelatin from the broken down collagen.
Last but not least, if this gelatin stuff is really culinary gold. Why then is gelatin for sale in like walmart, you know like a powder that you add water too. I heard it being called gold, I think it was you who said it. So I thought I had this unique thing then I see it available everywhere.
See above answer. Gelatin sold for the purpose of gelling liquids is refined to have a neutral flavor. The concentrated "jelly" which sets due to the gelatin content, is a highly flavorful juice that comes directly from the ducks.
Re Myoglobin, I don't get red on the bone. It's more little shards of red that are in parts of the white meat in the drumette, never the mid joint, They look like blood but I know they're not... Would extended accelerated aging during a slow heat up impact on myoglobin on any level.
I don't know; you'd have to test.
@ Robsous,
What about holding wings in C-vap. As you know, the textures range from crisp to moist.
Yes, you could absolutely do that. In fact, if I understand my history correctly, holding fried chicken crispy was the original use for C-VAPs.
Is it possible to maintain a crisp skin on a wing within the cvap or are wings best done cooked to order. In other words, is there no way to maintain them.
You'll have to side by side test to see if holding the wings in your C-VAP degrades the quality past an acceptable point when compared to fresh fried.
I don't have a pressure fryer as above so I'm basing my question on {sous vide/fry} technique, then into the cvap. Or is cvap holding cabinet only good for holding breaded products?
You should be able to hold the skin crispy in the C-VAP.
If crisp skin cannot be maintained, what about holding in cvap at 140F. Then frying for 45 seconds to crisp skin.
To hold the wings at 140F you'll need to fill the chamber with the steam setting, which will introduce water to the skin of the wings, which will keep them from reaching their full crisping potential. You can test it, but my guess would be that you'd be disappointed with the results.
What if I stored in airtight containers, like plastic cheese tubs or something within refrigerator. Would this prevent oxidation and therefor reduce that non-fresh flavor and texture from final product.
The air tight containers will still have air inside them. The only way to prevent these warmed over flavors is to cook and chill in a vacuum bag without breaking the seal.
Oh and for the record, is 3 days max in fridge post 1st cook, you'd never go past that?
Only you can answer that question through testing. But for me, I would say 3 days would be my max, but preferably I'd get all the wings sold in 2 days. But that's just me; again, this is something you need to test and decide for yourself.
@ J..weinstein,
Would one single fry in a pressure fryer really give the best result. Would it give a better result than sous vide followed by a 190c fry?
Only you can answer that by doing side-by-side blind taste testing.
OK, I'm going to do this, Would you lower the time as opposed to a single fry in an open fryer. Any idea of time off the top of your encyclopedia head(joke)?
If you're referring to pressure frying, it all depends on what pressure your frying at. Definitely less than 10 minutes.
Would you lower the temperature, I just never seen 190c being used in pressure fryers?
That's a pretty vague question, especially since I don't use a pressure fryer to cook my chicken wings. I would have to do a lot of different testing before I settled on something. If I did start testing tomorrow, my initial tests would probably be 5 PSI at 5, 8 & 10 minutes. I'd then check the result, see which one got the closest, and then go from there.
But I would probably search the web to see if anyone out there is getting good results from pressure frying chicken wings, and then see what kind of times and temps they're using.
If pressure fryers are the bees knees for buffalo wings. How come buffalo wild wings and wingstop open fry?
Like I said in the last audio podcast, pressure fryers are cool pieces of equipment, but I tend to lean towards the traditional double fry method for chicken wings. Pressure fryers take training to operate, and they're kind of inconvenient for a fast paced place like wing stop.
On that note, it always concerns me how the wing specialists as listed above, all do their wings in one cook from fresh and they all open fry. Any thoughts?
I'm not sure where you're getting that information, but I would assume that most of these places are not doing single frys from fresh. If I had to guess, I would say that they're either ordering in frozen wings that are already par cooked, or they have a prep team par cooking on property.
@ Holly,
What do you think of placing the wings in a fryer basket post confit and allowing them to drain over fryer. Therefor, there would be no encased fat on the surface before entering the refrigerator.
I don't know why this would be more convenit than removing the wings while the fat was still warm and pating dry, or gently heating the wings in their confit container to melt the fat, removing, and patting off excess oil.
There's no need to drain over the fryer. Just put wings in a strainer, lay in a single layer on a paper towel, and pat dry. Store in a single layer uncovered overnight in your fridge so they have a chance to dry out.
Would this melt the encased fat, I feel it would?
The fat is already melted because if I understand your question correctly, the wings are still warm from the confit and haven't been refigerated yet. Just let them sit in a strainer for a little bit and pat dry.
Would this exposure to heat affect internal moisture retention (even though they're in a basket above the oil, not in the oil)?
I don't know. I wouldn't leave the chicken wings in a fryer basket over the hot oil for an exnteded period of time because a) it's an ineffecint use of my fryer basket and b) time/temperature abuse.
Do you not think this is an awesome idea to remove encased fat (pre refrigeration/post confit)?
If you're doing this after the confit but before you refrigerate, I would just drain and pat dry. I can't really see why you would want to hold them in your fryer basket unless you were trying to melt solidified fat, meaning the confit had already been refrigerated long enough for the fat to solidify.
There should be an audio
Here's another audio podcast for you guys.
I love the questions, but BBQPlaya is right, this thread is too big and the questions are too varied.
I'm going to close down the comments on this thread, which doesn't mean I don't want to hear from you; I love doing these audio answers, and I want to keep this up.
What I want though is for everyone to continue with the testing in their kitchens, and then create a new forum thread for any questions they come across.
Also, if you have a general cooking question, I'm going to start a weekly Q&A podcast, so watch for that forum thread announcement.
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