TO CONFIT
French cooks confit—cook very, very slowly in a bucket of fat—a lot more than just duck legs, the one food we think of as confit. (It is both a verb and a noun; the second syllable is pronounced “fee”; the word means “conserved.”)
Plus, they confit with sacks of sugar, too, so you’ll see on French grocery shelves confits of various fruits, as well as other fat confits of different vegetables, garlic and onion, and meats such as gizzards and pork belly.
Unlike deep fat frying (done poorly), a confit in fat doesn’t render the food greasy or dry it out. It also conserves the meat—long ago, this was the original idea—in a medium uncongenial to bacterial spoilage.
Nowadays, little necessitates preserving meat this way, but the result of the confit process will forever hallow the table. It renders meat that is meltingly tender. What cooks also will do forever is crisp up the meat confit before serving, giving that pillow of pleasure a crunchy exterior. Major yum.
RECIPE: Chicken thigh confit
Translated from Exceldor at recettes.zeste.tv
Ingredients
4 chicken thighs
3 tablespoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon dried juniper berries
4-6 cups duck or goose fat or lard
4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 head garlic, cut in 2 crosswise
Directions
In a bowl, combine salt, brown sugar, pepper, and juniper berries. Rub the chicken with the mixture and place in a refrigerator in a large resealable plastic bag for 24 hours.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Rinse and pat dry the chicken with paper toweling. Heat the fat to 160 degrees in a sturdy, sufficiently large and ovenproof pan or pot. Place the thighs in the quivering fat to cover them completely.
Add rosemary, thyme, and garlic. Bake, with pan cover askew, for about 1 and 1/2 hours or until the meat is very tender and beginning to fall from its bones. Check the fat during cooking; it should not boil, just slightly simmer.
Carefully remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm. To serve: if desired, crisp chicken skin very well by broiling or searing at high heat for 3-4 minutes; or skin and debone meat for a warm salad with caramelized apples.
(Note: You also may use an equal measure of easier-to-find pure olive oil for the fat or lard.)