Sous Vide Duck Confit | Serious Eats

I have a question for you let's just say hypothetically you're living on a farm you've just slaughtered like 50 ducks and now you need to figure out what to do with them what might you do the answer is make duck confit which is a very traditional method from the southwest of France in which you take the duck usually the legs because the dark meat handle long slow cooking really well you cure them lightly and then you very slowly cook them in their own liquefied fat here's the thing though that is a really impractical thing to do at home it works on farms it works in restaurants but at home do you really want to store that much liquid duck fat just to confit some legs for fun sometimes who has that which duck fat at home I used to I used to and then I dropped it on the floor you could drop your duck fat on the floor too what's really cool with sous-vide is you don't need any rendered duck fat at all you take your duck legs you put them in the plastic bag you seal the bag you sucked all the air out and because you've sucked all the air out when you very slowly cook the duck legs in the hot water bath when the fat renders it does submerge them all around 360 degrees here's how you do it I need my duck [Music] yeah a salt very generously in a traditional confit the duck is cured a little a little bit so it's okay to have a slightly heavy hand with the salt there's almost nothing else to do I just I'm gonna chop up a couple cloves of garlic basically one clove per duck leg and I've got some thyme this is a special cutting technique called using the base of your hand to stabilize a warped cutting board I'll rub the garlic onto the duck this is a very loosey-goosey thing and this is probably gonna fall off but we'll do it for now time all I have to do is put my duck into my vacuum sealer bag you would just use whatever vacuum sealer you have at home or you could use a ziploc bag and use the water displacement method where you dip the bag into a vessel of water to push air out and then seal it in go the duck legs and we'll slide this here this is my favorite part [Music] here I have two vacuum-sealed duck legs season with salt rubbed with a little garlic some thyme in there and now it's time to put it in my hot water bath after rounds and rounds of testing I found that the perfect combination of temperature and time for sous-vide duck confit is a hundred and fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit water bath and a 36-hour cooking time if you don't have that time you can raise the water temperature to 170 and run it for eight hours 36 hours is definitely a long time but it's time completely unattended so all you have to do is plan far enough in advance you can run this thing while you're at work while you're sleeping it's no problem so all we've to do is lower this vacuum-sealed duck into the water bath where the heat will begin to render the fat that is on the legs as that fat renders it will coat the legs in the bag and since there's almost no air in the bag it's gonna be pressed up all against the duct and you have essentially simulated duck submerged in its own fat in this bag so this just has to run for 36 hours the good news is I have some already made we're gonna get that right here - duck legs tenders can be and as you can see in the little bit of space that there is it's rendered duck fat so to finish these off take them out of the bag I want to be gentle with these at this point because it's very easy to tear the skin come on out little ducks scrape off any congealed fat and juices I'll flip these skin side up if you heat it up and skim off the fat you can save the fat that is delicious duck fat that is great for roasting potatoes or you know cooking stuff vegetables sauteing vegetables it's not enough to make a traditional confit but it is enough to have some fun in the kitchen all right I'm just gonna put these in the oven I've got a 450 degree oven nice and hot to get these heated through and start crisping the skin up I think it's time a little bit smokey get ready whoa yeah that duck fat smokes I guess you need to open your windows at home okay very hot hot ain't crispy look at that beautiful beautiful beautiful oh look at that oh my god crispy on the bottom I kind of just want to eat it right off the tray can I eat it seriously can I eat it oh my god it's fork-tender it's just extraordinary this is so worth the 36-hour wait [Music]

Channel: Serious Eats

Views: 163,929

Rating: 4.80866 out of 5

Keywords: Serious Eats, cooking, food, sous vide, sous vide techniques, how to sous vide, sous vide duck confit, homemade duck confit, how to duck confit, duck recipes, duck confit recipes, confit recipes, fancy food, immersion circulator, food gadgets, food technology, food technique, make duck confit, easy fancy recipe, cool food, relaxing food, how to cook, cooking techniques, french food, daniel gritzer, the food lab, sous vide projects, sous vide recipes

Id: 3bX1G-EASnM

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019