ISO: Confit Reference

June 26, 2013 7:00 AM

I have an immersion circulator. Confit is delicious. What's the best reference for making lots of interesting confits?

I'm of the opinion that meat confits are the perfect breakfast food, and while sous vide eggs are phenomenal, I need some more variety in my breakfast. I'd also like to explore the technique a bit and play around with vegetable confits. Can anyone recommend a solid reference book or blog focusing on confits?

posted by bfranklin to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

the more you investigate it you will eventually find yourself asking "what is confit?". I don't know if there is a good answer.

If you have a vacuum machine and a circulator then you might experiment with this technique: salt the meat with 2% the total weight in salt. Rub that salt in with some dry seasonings of your choice, try anything. Put the salted meat on a rack and set it in the fridge for a night or even two. wash off the salt and herbs and vacuum with a good amount of oil and cook around 80 Celsius for 12 hours or so. Reheat/sear in a fry pan and eat. Before putting it in the bag you can do a pre-sear to make the post-sear faster but this changes the flavor from a traditional confit. For veg. just do 1% salt with the veg vacuumed overnight in the fridge then put in new bags with oil and circulate at 80 until you reach the softness you like.
posted by Infernarl at 7:51 AM on June 26, 2013 [1 favorite]

I saw this recipe for duck confit and wow that looks fabulous. The trick is getting those 4 cups of duck fat. However, if you make Alton Brown's duck recipe a couple times first (and do - it's fabulous) to bootstrap your confit. The steaming part of cooking the duck renders out the fat. Chill the water and scoop off the fat.
posted by plinth at 8:42 AM on June 26, 2013

Best answer: I am very strongly of the opinion that confit sous vide is never as good as traditional confit because of the lack of flavor concentration via evaporation and the way it matures differently. But sous vide is much much easier

For meats - I really like to use a little pink salt for the nitrates/fix the color but a very tiny amount. I also usually let it sit for a month before I start using it.

References: Charcuterie by Ruhlman, Wolfert "Cooking of Southwestern France", Jane Grigson "Charcuterie and the Art of French Pork Cookery". The later has really solid sections on rillette and rillons - which are basically confit pork.

Veg - Just cook it in duck fat. It'll be good.
posted by JPD at 10:13 AM on June 26, 2013

Sorry - THIS recipe for duck confit.
posted by plinth at 11:10 AM on June 26, 2013