I have this whole frozen duck and I need to make cassoulet.

January 5, 2012 4:54 PM

I've promised to make cassoulet tomorrow. I have a whole entire duck to use in said cassoulet. Most recipes call for only duck legs. Is there a way around this?

Normally, you brown some duck legs in a pan with bacon/sausage and then dump in white beans and tomatoes and white wine. However, I have a WHOLE DUCK. Uh...? Should I attempt to butcher it myself while it is raw (I would prefer not to)? Please give me your ideas. I am open to any and all suggestions. You needn't have previous cassoulet experience.

posted by 200burritos to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Best answer: You do need your duck in pieces, otherwise it's going to be kind of a mess to brown, cook, and eat. Cutting up a duck is really not that big a deal. Alternatively, you could take it back to the butcher and ask them to do it.
posted by ottereroticist at 5:08 PM on January 5, 2012

Best answer: Traditionally, the duck legs are made into confit first, but you don't have time for that. If I were in your shoes, I'd cut the legs off the duck and reserve the breast for another use.

(as a helpful tip, if you make a delicious stock starting tonight from pork bones, onions, carrots, celery, sage, rosemary, thyme, bay, and marjoram, and then reduce it by half, it will make your cassoulet crazy good. Even better, use pigs' feet (fresh not pickled) if you can get them. I made cassoulet in November with confit, lamb shoulder, homemade sausage, bacon, beans, tomatoes, and the above stock and it was possibly the best thing I've ever eaten.)
posted by KathrynT at 5:28 PM on January 5, 2012 [5 favorites]

Best answer: You could also roast the duck, then add the pieces to the cassoulet. I did this once when I could not find duck confit, and it was rather tasty. Roasting the duck turned out to be incredibly easy.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 5:54 PM on January 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yeah, just roast it. I do that if I haven't bothered confitting pieces. I also take all meat off the bone after, when it cooks with the beans. It's much, much nicer to eat that way. If you can get a copy of Mastering the Art of French cooking, do it--Julia Child's fantastic on this. And don't worry. It will be delicious!
posted by mimi at 6:19 PM on January 5, 2012

This post may help.
posted by theora55 at 10:09 PM on January 5, 2012

Best answer: If you check out my final comment in the post theora55 links to above, there's a link to a video on how to butcher a duck. I'd never done it before, but it was pretty simple even though I only had a half a raw duck. When I made mine, I stripped the meat from the leg and cut up the breast into large chunks, browned it all, and went on my merry way with the rest of the recipe. The carcass is in the freezer and is going to make stunning stock this weekend.

If you don't have time to make stock from pork bones, as KathrynT mentions above, try cooking your beans this way. I got this from Hugh Fearney-Whittingstall's sublime Meat book:

Cook the beans in water with bouquet garni of bay leaves, parsley, and a little optional thyme; a medium-sized onion studded with four cloves; two whole cloves of garlic; and an optional 125g piece of pork belly fat/pig skin. During cooking top up the cooking water as needed, but at the end of cooking you want the beans to be in a soupy liquid of numminess. Remove the onion+cloves, garlic, piggy stuff, bouquet garni, and garlic.

I hope yours turns out as well as mine did.
posted by TheDonF at 1:10 PM on January 6, 2012

Huh. My link goes straight to the video instead of my comment. Whoops.
posted by TheDonF at 1:11 PM on January 6, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks, all. I was all set to roast the duck, but I decided to butcher it at the very last minute. The cassoulet was incredible and nearly everybody had seconds.
posted by 200burritos at 7:40 AM on January 7, 2012