My control was seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, and thyme; vacuum-bagged; and placed directly into a water bath to cook for the set time. We didn’t have time to let it dry properly (only for 4 hours or so), so it didn’t turn out as crispy as needed. Daniel cooked for years in some of New York's top American, Italian and French restaurants - starting at the age of 13, when he began staging at the legendary restaurant Chanterelle. The 160°F (71°C) samples were drier than the duck cooked at 155 and 150, while the latter two were indistinguishable from each other. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Would like to share pictures, but do not know how via the plattform. 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. This sealed the meat against the air, preventing spoilage. In both cases, the cooked ingredient is completely tenderized (cooked in its own juices or in olive oil). The big questions in developing any sous vide recipe are how hot and how long. The book covers sous vide cooking in great detail. Turkey, Duck or Goose Leg Confit Sous Vide Recipe. This recipe takes duck confit to new heights by using the sous vide method for moistness and tenderness along with the grill for smokiness. This cast iron pizza recipe is the easiest method for making a crisp-crusted, airy, chewy pan pizza at home. Maintaining such precise temperatures sounds hard without specialized equipment…. First, the cured duck legs are sous vide in duck fat for 24 hours at 145°F to make them extra-moist and tender. 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. Do you see any reason you shouldn’t use pork fat? If you are looking for other inspiring sous-vide recipes, then check these recipes below: They won't know what they're missing. I'd be remiss here if I didn't mention the work of Paula Wolfert, both for popularizing the technique of making confit in the United States and for being generations ahead of most other cooks on the advantages of sous vide cooking. The meat falls from the bone the most easily, but there's a noticeable chalky dryness in the 20- to 40-hour samples. One could. The best were the 36- and 40-hour samples, which were difficult to distinguish. I looked it up and that is what I paid. I followed the Modernist Cuisine recommendation of using 18% by weight cure mix (i.e. Now, I'm not a sous vide acolyte. While my sous vide duck confit recipe isn't intended to be aged like a classic confit, I was still curious to know how important the curing step was. 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. Season the duck breasts with salt and pepper. The final step was to pack the meat into a container, pour the liquefied fat on top to fully submerge it, and cool it down enough for the fat to solidify. Try a 2-3 hour purge in cool water and let them rest overnight before proceeding so the brine equalizes. 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. Best regards! I believe the technique is a sometimes-useful tool with notable strengths, but also real weaknesses. And, technically speaking, that purist would be right. If that's enough to send the purists away in a huff, so be it. Sous Vide Duck Recipes and Articles. Like heat-retention cooking, the idea of cooking food in packages is not new. Very cool. Generously season meat sides with … Thanks for the comment. 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. Traditional duck confit is a pain to make because you need so much duck fat. The sous-vide cooking style has a very similar effect to the confit cooking style. None of which involve shards of glass—guaranteed. It is possible to make duck legs tender with sous-vide at lower temperatures (i.e. Apart from using much less duck fat, the advantage is also that temperature control is very easy. The biggest challenge for most home cooks faced with a duck confit recipe is procuring enough rendered fat to submerge all the duck. And seperate vacuum packing equipment, or do you just need bags? With time, the confit ripened and its flavor changed, becoming deeper, funkier, and more delicious. This is another great, informative post, Stefan. 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. And, to be honest, in many cases, I prefer that gradient. Actually, $260 is cheapest I see it for right now. It excels if consistency is your ultimate goal—if you want steaks cooked to a precise temperature from edge to edge, for instance. Or freeze you liquid ingredients before vacuum sealing. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy. I would have bluffed it and pretended everything came out perfect. With sous vide duck confit, I will never be traumatized like that again. First I would like to congratulate on the recipe. 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. LOL yes i read about that – and hanging it up in a cool airy place and so on. Change ). [Video: The Serious Eats Team, Photographs: Emily Dryden, unless otherwise noted]. It certainly is! Here's a description of the results from my tests: In addition to the above temperatures, I also ran tests at five degrees above and below my preferred 155°F sample, just to make sure I wasn't hovering close to, but not exactly on, the ideal temp. This long cooking process yielded meat with an outstanding, almost melting, texture. Preparing food sous vide is one of the hallmarks of Modernist cooking and is often associated with expensive equipment and intricate applications. Hope this helps; let me know how it turns out. Not only does it make an exceptional version of the dish, it's far easier than the traditional method, requiring not an ounce of rendered fat. "Modernist Cuisine" is an amazing set of books by Nathan Myhrvold and a team. The boiling is done in duck fat. For deco i added pomegrate and cherry and created a bit of pan gravy using red wine and chicken stock. Would love to read about your sous-vide duck leg confit experiences…. Tomorrow, I review Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking for The New York Times, the heavily hyped and praised 6 volume, 2400-page romp through the whole world of cooking, a manifesto pronouncing the arrival of a new cultural movement. That gives us unprecedented control over the meat's texture. 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. You get the effect of duck legs submerged in fat, without needing more than the few tablespoons that form in the bag. First, because it really and truly wasn't rotten; second, because it was as tender and silky as I could have hoped for. One could, in theory, cure the duck with an appropriately large amount of salt, vacuum-seal it, cook it for hours on end at a temperature that is high enough (and for a time that is long enough) to kill whatever bad bugs might be in the bags, and then leave the pouches unopened in the refrigerator for several months to age it. Masterful as ever Stefan. To make duck leg confit the traditional way, you need quite a bit of duck fat. 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. Cooking the duck sous vide automatically solves that problem. Farmers in rural southwest France would find themselves with an abundance of meat at the various points in the year when animals were slaughtered—more meat than they could hope to eat before it turned. This duck confit was one component in the duck confit salad, the French part of the meal. I do a little of both. A decent option if time-saving is critical; otherwise, not the best. 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. In fact, one of the weaknesses of the vacuum bags is that you can’t use wet ingredients. The cooking time and temperature were perfect as the meat was tender and succulent. Thanks, Conor. 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?) I did 10 hours in vac and Salt brine with sage, thyme and crushed bay leaves. 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