Great cooking is one hundred percent about technique.
Along with the basic cooking techniques there are many specialty techniques which professional cooks employ. Most of these are not really practical for the home cook, or at least not on a regular basis. Although with a little streamlining they can make for a fun project.
The preservation and transformation of lesser quality meats into sublime treasures involves one such technique, and can be performed at home with just a little attention to detail.
The confit technique is one of those esoteric sounding French terms that is widely misunderstood by most foodies. Confit at its most basic is simply a way to preserve a product. Most of y’all likely associate it with duck. Yes DUCK CONFIT! Even writing the name makes me droll. Definitely on my top ten list of the most incredibly sumptuous dishes ever created.
The confit technique not only utilizes preservation techniques but also low and slow cooking to tenderize products by gradually breaking down the cell structure. The process for duck legs begins with a quick cure and our friend “salt” is the star of this sequence. Other seasonings and aromatics can be used as well. This cure can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. Next brush off any whole spices and excess cure and submerge the duck in melted fat. This is like a hot tub for the duck, a duck sauna, a duck spa day, just hold the facial. Gosh the lucky ducky, I’m slightly jealous.
Anyhow the cooking temperature should be around 250°-300° and should last about 6-8 hours. The result, well let’s just say it beats getting my two front teeth for Christmas. But once again it’s a big pain for the home cook. Just finding duck legs is a project and what do you do with all the extra duck fat (besides eating it with a spoon)? Fortunately other proteins can benefit from this technique as well as vegetables.
So here’s a streamlined version that uses very little fat. In this case we’re going to Chef-up some pork butt and make the best Carnitas ever!