The Cure · Main
Confit Duck Leg
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, a warm current of chile, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 4 duck legs, about 1.2 kg
- 24 g coarse sea salt (2%)
- 4 g black peppercorns, cracked
- 6 thyme sprigs
- 3 bay leaves, torn
- 4 garlic cloves, bruised
- 1.2 kg duck fat
The skills inside
ConfitBrining & curingStraining & passing through a sieveThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
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Method
- Toss the legs with the salt, pepper, thyme, bay and garlic, then cure uncovered on a rack in the fridge for 24 hours. 600 min
- Wipe off the cure and aromatics and pat the legs dry, because salt crystals left clinging will make the fat too salty to reuse.
- Melt the fat in a deep pan, settle the legs in fully submerged, and hold at 85C (185F), one lazy bubble every few seconds and no more, for 3 hours. 180 min
- They are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the thigh joint and the drumstick meat has pulled back from the bone.
- Cool in the fat, lift the legs into a jar, pour the strained fat over to cover by 1 cm, and refrigerate at least a week before eating.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir (the classic)
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais (Morgon)
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Black cherry spritz
Acid and silk against duck fat: the oldest marriage in Burgundy, with Gamay as its cheerful younger witness.
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