Mary’s Free Range Duck

Without a doubt, my favorite classic French dish is duck leg confit. I’ve had this dish every year at Fringale, a small French bistro in San Francisco. It is the one meal I always look forward to each time we are there.  Duck confit is one of those dishes that takes a lot of patience because of the lengthy process of preparing it.  The duck is salt cured and then cooked slowly in lots of duck fat.  The problem of doing this the traditional way, is that you need quite a bit of duck fat as the duck legs need to be submerged in it, then slowly cooked for several hours.  Sous vide duck confit on the other hand allows the home cook to replicate this dish without requiring all that duck fat.  The duck legs are cooked in a sealed bag that holds the small amount of fat that renders from the duck legs, reproducing the submerged effect of the classic method. The first time we made it I thought the 36 hour cooking time would never end.  But it did, and the outcome was fantastic.  When you sous vide meat the first thing you’ll notice is that it looks quite drab.  There’s no browning (yet) but the meat is cooked to perfection.  In this recipe the duck is finished for 7-8 minutes under the broiler until the skin is gloriously browned and crisp.

Fortunately we can find good duck legs at our local Whole Foods market.  We buy 3 packs of two legs each and sous vide them all at once then vacuum seal and freeze the ones we don’t eat right away.

Frenching the duck legs (cutting away the meat from the bone) makes for an elegant presentation.  I also trimmed off some of the thick, excess fat from the duck.

The duck legs are generously salted then sealed in an airtight bag with thyme, garlic and orange peel (optional) and torn bay leaves if you prefer.  There is some discussion as to whether or not using raw garlic at low cooking temperatures is safe. To err on the side of caution, I slice the garlic and gently pan-fry each piece before they go into the sous vide bag with the duck legs.  Alternatively, you can substitute dried minced garlic.

Let the 36 hour timer begin!  Our favorite sous vide device is the ChefSteps Joule.  You may have seen some very large and heavy sous vide machines at various stores.  The Joule is small, light weight and controlled through their app on your phone.

Once the duck leg’s 36 hour sous vide time is up, they are gently wiped clean of any herbs and excess duck fat.  You can clearly see that the duck legs are pale and not very attractive at this point. But they are perfectly cooked and fall off the bone tender.

The duck legs are placed in a roasting pan (we use a higher sided pan as the duck can splatter a bit) and one that is safe to use under the broiler.  We use a heavy enameled cast iron pan.

I like to serve this with braised lentils though sometimes you need a quick fix which means any type of potato (even tater tots are welcome) will be just fine. Sometimes you get both.