[Sca-cooks] Slightly OOP - Made Confit yesterday

[Michael Gunter]

I've always heard and even eaten confit but always considered it to be too challenging, especially
in getting so much duck fat. Well, I read an article stating that it could be any kind of liquid fat and
not just rendered fat. So I decided to to a duck confit in sugo using olive oil instead of the rendered
fat.  
 
The first problem I encountered was not being able to find duck legs. Well, confit can be of any
meat so I went with turkey legs instead. I figure the deep taste of turkey will work as well as duck
and the Italians adore turkey meat. I got them home and made a mix of kosher salt, cinnamon and
dried thyme, put the turkey legs in a gallon sized ziplock bag and added the salt mixture. A good toss
around had the legs well coated and they went into the fridge for a couple of hours. 
 
Once they had seasoned I took them out and rinsed the salt off. The salt and spices had done the
trick, the legs were tighter and smelled wonderfully of cinnamon and thyme. I put them in my slow
cooker and covered with olive oil. A good pinch of rosemary and a couple of bay leaves were added
and the cooker was put on low heat. One problem I had was maintaining the temp. The low was
too low and the high brought the oil to a simmer. Once it was heated even the low caused it to cook
too hot so it was placed on warm for around 10 hours. The house smelled wonderful.
 
Later that night I took the legs out of the cooker and shredded the meat. It literally fell off the bone and
smelled magnificent. The oil was drained back into the bottle it came from and was disgarded. I would
like to think I could use the oil again but didn't want to risk it.
 
Tomorrow the meat will be made into a sugo sauce:
Dice and onion and soften in a bit of olive oil.
Add the shredded meat
Add diced tomatoes and tomato sauce with a pinch of cayenne pepper.
Simmer a bit and then add some grated mozzrella and parmesian cheese and fresh thyme leaves.
Add cooked tagliatelle pasta.
Serve.
 
We'll see how it goes. 
 
Other than what feels like a waste of cheap olive oil making the confit was very easy and the end result
is amazing.
 
Gunthar