HAPPY NEW YEAR...CASSOULET DAY 2

The second day (Thursday) is a light schedule. The process is to imitate duck confit. A confit is an old method of storing meats by rendering out fat and storing the meat covered with fat. In this case, we are not using fat, but the cooking method known as sous vide to tenderize the duck meat. After cutting up the duck (this was about the only part where we purchased an ingredient), it is placed overnight in a bag with herbs. Paula Wolfert gives full instructions in her book "The Cooking of SW France". The beauty of this is that it takes 2 days instead of weeks.

The result was excellent. The duck meat becomes silky smooth instead of stringy. Betsy did cheat the instructions a bit. The recipe calls for using just the legs, but she used pretty much the whole thing.