Confit de canard and cassoulet

The southwestern French bean dish called cassoulet doesn't always contain duck or goose, but in my opinion cassoulet is always better when it does. Depending on the cook and the recipe followed, the only constant in cassoulet is beans. The meats served with the beans can include fresh or brined pork, fresh pork sausages, slow-cooked duck or goose, lamb or mutton, or even partridge.

Cuisses de canard confites
Slow-cooked wing & thigh meat of a duck

In France nearly anywhere, you can buy confit de canard packed in tins/cans. Confit is duck, usually leg, thigh, and wing sections, that are marinated for a day and then cooked slowly in enough goose or duck fat to completely cover all the meat. The leaner duck breast is reserved for grilling or pan-roasting.

Here is the confit de canard with the skin stripped off.

The word « confit » means slow-cooked. Confiture is slow-cooked fruit. Fruits confits are pieces of candied fruit. Both those processes require a sugar syrup. Confit de canard or d'oie is duck or goose cooked in the savory equivalent of syrup, which is melted fat. Cooking fruit is sugar syrup, or cooking meat in fat, has one purpose: the food is preserved in a form that can be stored long-term. And the flavor is actually enhanced.

Duck and Toulouse-style pork sausages are good in cassoulet.

Part of the process in making duck confit is letting the duck pieces "cure" in the fat they've been cooked in. The curing can take a long as three months. Submerged in duck fat, the meat is protected from oxygen and from bacteria that would cause it to spoil. It can be kept in the refrigerator or in a cool cellar for the time it takes to cure completely.

Here's what's left after you put the duck meat in the beans.

The result is meat that is tender, flavorful, and falling off the bone. There are two ways to eat confit de canard. One is to take the duck leg & thigh sections out of the fat they cooked in, put them on a rack in the oven, or even in a pan on the top of the stove, and heat them until the fat on them drips away and the duck skin crisps up and turns golden brown.

Making cassoulet — another layer of beans goes on top,
over the boneless meat and sausages.

Another way is to heat the "confitted" duck pieces up slightly and then strip the skin and meat off the bones. The skin can be cut into strips and fried in a pan to make "cracklings" that are good cooked into cornbread, served in a salad, or served with a dish of beans like cassoulet. The meat stripped off the bones is what you put in the cassoulet beans, along with some pork or pork sausages.