In 1982, when I dropped out of NYU to go La Varenne, I didn’t even know what duck confit was. It was at that cooking school that I heard about duck confit, and I was instantly intrigued by the idea of cooking something entirely in its own fat.
To confit (con-FEE) is the ancient technique of cooking duck or goose in its own fat, resulting in an incredibly tender, flavorful meat whose skin will crisp up remarkably under high heat. For this recipe, I prefer to use the breed called Pekin duck, also known as Long Island duck, which tends to be tenderer. If you don’t have access to Pekin duck, don’t worry—any duck will work well.
The spice, sugar, and salt mixture is the dry cure, flavoring and tenderizing the duck at the same time. While you can render your own duck fat, it’s much easier to buy a quart or two at a good butcher, liquefy it in a pot, and pour it over the duck.
Once you get the technique down, you can play around with the cure, trying different herbs and spices as long as the balance of sugar and salt remains palatable. Juniper berries make a fine addition to a cure, as do cardamom pods for something more exotic.
A cartouche is a makeshift drop lid, fashioned by cutting a piece of parchment paper to fit snugly inside the pot, resting directly on what you’re cooking. It reduces evaporation, while simultaneously keeping the ingredients submerged.
You’ll know the duck is finished when the meat has pulled back from the end of the drumstick, exposing the bone. Despite all the duck fat in the recipe, there’s not that much in the dish because it’s all been rendered out. Once it’s cooled, you can use the gorgeous sweet-salty-spicy duck for any number of things. You can pull the meat and add it to a salad or make a pasta sauce out of it. Or, when it gets to room temperature, you can delicately pull the leg and thigh bones out of the meat, preserving the meat’s shape, and fry the remaining piece in a pan with a little bit of duck fat over low heat. Cook it like this until the skin has become nice and crispy, and then serve the meat over some potatoes, polenta, or greens.
SERVES: 4
4 duck legs
1 cup kosher salt
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1½ heaping tablespoons ground star anise
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2–3 sprigs fresh thyme
8 cloves garlic, peeled
2 quarts (32 ounces) rendered duck fat, warmed until pourable
Remove any excess gobs of fat from the duck legs; discard the fat. Gently cover as much of the duck meat with the skin as possible.
In a bowl, place the salt, sugar, pepper, star anise, and cinnamon and mix well to combine. Holding each duck leg over a plate, liberally sprinkle the mixture over the entire surface of the duck and let the excess fall onto the plate. Don’t press it into the skin. Cover a large plate or rimmed baking sheet with parchment or plastic wrap and place the duck legs, skin-side down, on the plate. Refrigerate, uncovered, for 24 hours, or up to, but no more than, 72 hours.
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
Rinse the duck legs and pat dry. Place the legs skin-side down in a large, heavy-bottomed pot. Add the thyme and garlic, and pour the liquid duck fat over the duck legs. The fat should cover the legs completely.
Cut a circle of parchment paper large enough to fit inside the pot and cover the duck; press it gently over the duck. Cover the pot with foil or a tight-fitting lid.
Put the pot in the oven and cook for 2 hours and 15–20 minutes. Check occasionally to make sure the fat isn’t boiling; if it is, turn the heat down.
Remove the pot from the oven and let cool. When the pot is at room temperature, it can be refrigerated or cooked immediately.
Remove the duck from the fat and gently pull on the thigh bone and drumstick. They should slip out easily. Gently pull the skin so it’s flat over the meat so all the skin will make contact with the pan.
In a nonstick pan over medium heat, heat ½ tablespoon of the duck fat from the pot. Put the duck into the pan and turn the heat to very low. Cook until the skin is crisp and brittle and the meat warmed through.
Being in Texas, I find myself often in the company of barbecue masters, whose specialty is slow-cooked beef. However, being a New Yorker, I learned barbecue from Jews and French people. If barbecue is all about cooking low and slow with smoke, the New York style is the same, minus the smoke. In fact, when we slow cook in the Knife kitchen, it’s not uncommon for me to announce to the crew, “Get ready, we’re making French barbecue today!”
Slow cooking is an art, and the cow provides so many wonderful cuts for this process—there’s the oxtail, shank, and short rib, and tongue for braising. There’s the rump for turning into roast beef. The brisket for barbecue or pastrami. Those are the classic methods of slow cooking. But in the last twenty years, a new method has emerged called sous vide. It allows you to do all kinds of new and interesting things, because it takes cooking to the lowest and the slowest.
I love to do this really interesting hybrid presentation of the short rib (the classic slow-cooking cut) that I want to share with you. It’s a rather lengthy process, but the result brings you the depth and texture of the long, slow cook with the sizzle of a steak. I think it’s pretty amazing.*