Food Stories

Each step of the confit process sounds deceptively simple. But with each step, one discovers that there are gremlins hidden along the way.

Step One: “Salt, wrap and chill your meat for eighteen to twenty-four hours.”

Sounds easy, right? Except what vessel do you own that can hold nine pounds of turkey legs in your fridge? I had a plastic hotel pan, which just barely accomplished the task; I had to remove a drawer from my fridge to make it work.

Step Two: “Wash down your now aged-and-salted meat and place pieces two-deep into a cooking vessel, then cover with fat. Cook for twelve to fourteen hours at a balmy one hundred and ninety degrees.”

Now we’ve got a real problem. Cooking nine pounds of beef stew sucks, but at least you can just stack it all to the top of your biggest ovenproof dish or roasting pan. Turkey legs? Those can only be maybe two layers deep, otherwise you’ll be serving pulled-turkey rillettes instead of confit. My very largest roasting pan contained the misery, but only barely. And two of the pieces weren’t completely submerged.

Step Three: “Remove the cooked meat to a chilling vessel. Strain the cooking fat and pour the fat over the meats. Chill.”

After fourteen hours in your oven, this meat is now softer than tissue paper and has more in common with unset Jello than it does with Thanksgiving turkey. Your task: Gently and delicately remove each piece. I used a combination of spatulas, tongs, a backhoe, and a robot that I’ve trained to love meat.

Now I await the fresh hell of “remove chilled meats and crisp the skin in a pan; warm in the oven for eight to ten minutes and then serve.”

Turkey is a finicky beast. It’s notoriously impossible to cook breast meat and dark meat to the proper temperature in the traditional “whole bird in the oven” method. Worse, I can only barely tolerate white meat. And nobody’s a good turkey carver, so don’t kid yourself.

This year’s plan: Confit. Why not? Turkey leg quarters are like big duck legs. With enough duck fat (say, four quarts) and a good recipe (like Thomas Keller’s confit with green salt), it might even come together.

The prep took me to Mel Inman, Jr.’s Market Poultry at Eastern Market. Armed with ALL of their turkey leg quarters, I metroed home in silence. Later, I stuffed all four of them (eight plus pounds) into a plastic hotel pan and coated them in Thomas Keller’s green salt.

Now, the plan is to let them sit overnight until I pick up my four quarts of duck fat from The Butcher Block at BRABO in Old Town, Alexandria tomorrow afternoon. Then, an overnight braise at 190 degrees and a three-day chill down in the fridge. On Thanksgiving, I’ll bring them to room temperature, exhume them from their shallow duck fat graves, and pan fry them until they’re crispy.

And of course, pix or get out. So keep watching this space.

France (mirepoix and red wine), Spain (sherry-soaked mushrooms and shallots) and Italy (tomatoes and cannellini beans) all provide their piece to this stew.

Ingredients: Cannellini beans (soaked overnight in water), carrots, celery, potatoes, turnips, beef and beef bones (I prefer chuck roast and a medium-sized shank to go with the bones), shallots, mushrooms, beef broth, two bottles of red wine, can of fire-roasted tomatoes.

Start with a mirepoix of carrots, celery, potato and turnip. Brown these in a separate pot, preferably the largest one in the house.

Separately, cube then brown the beef and bones in a bit of olive oil. Remove to a bowl. Deglaze with two to three cups of sherry and add shallots and mushrooms. Cook until browned and liquid is mostly evaporated.

Add browned beef and shallot-mushroom mixture to the mirepoix. Add the remaining ingredients and the beans. Boil for one minute then lower temperature and simmer for hours.

Eat spooned over crusty bread in bowls.

Bacon onion jam is the only condiment (other than a runny and piquant gorgonzola dolce) that I require on my burgers. This preparation takes some time, but doesn’t involve much supervision.

Gather your ingredients: Five medium red onions, halved and sliced in quarter-inch thick ribbons; one package of thick-cut bacon, matchsticked; a quarter-cup of brown sugar; a tablespoon of thick balsamic vinegar; two tablespoons of scotch, bourbon or another whiskey; a half of a lemon, juiced and zested.

Cook the bacon on medium-low until the fat has rendered. Remove the bacon from the pan and raise temperature to medium/medium-high and cook for roughly twenty minutes or until soft. Turn the heat down to low/medium-low and add the sugar, vinegar, whiskey and lemon juice and zest and cook until exceedingly soft, like a marmalade, roughly an additional hour. Add the bacon just before removing from the heat and storing.

Serve from a mason jar or other storage container; will keep in the fridge for a month. I like a heaping tablespoon atop my burger.