How To Prepare Duck Confit From A Tin?
It seems obvious to us! But then half our staff are French and we spend our days working with French food, so we take some things for granted! But we do every so often receive the question, “what do I do with my duck confit tin?” from customers. And some years ago we served some duck confit to friends, gave them a tin to take home, only to see it on their kitchen shelf some months later. To which we said “but we thought you liked it”, reply, “we do but don’t know what to do with it!” So we have listed below some simple steps to prepare and enjoy duck confit!
Place Your Duck Confit Tin At Room Temperature
A few hours before you use it. Why? Tins of duck confit contain a liberal amount of duck fat. If the tin is cold (say from the garage), the duck fat is solid, making it very hard to remove the duck legs without breaking them, which can be frustrating. If the tin and contents are at room temperature, the duck fat becomes loose, making it much easier to remove the duck legs.
If you did forget to do this, you can always place your duck confit in tepid water for half an hour for much the same effect.
Brush Off Excess Duck Fat
We recommend carrying out the following over or in your kitchen sink as confit is fat!
Open your tin. Remove the duck legs and allow any excess duck fat to drain off back into the tin. Then place your duck legs into an oven dish. If there still seems to be a little too much duck fat, you can scrape it off with a spoon.
The reason for this is that duck confit is already fat and the fat on the duck confit and in the skin is more than enough for cooking it. If you don’t brush off the excess fat, your confit will be swimming in duck fat when you come to serve it.
Place Duck Confit In An Oven
180c-190c skin side up until golden brown. This usually takes around 20 to 25 minutes depending on your oven. But the main indicator that your confit is ready to serve is the skin colour. Once your duck confit skin is golden brown, it is ready!
Bearing in mind that canned duck confit is already cooked – all you are doing is heating up/ finishing it off in the correct way. So there is no risk of the duck meat being undercooked.
Keep Your Duck Fat For Duck Fat Roast Potatoes!
Keep the duck fat in the tin and store it in a fridge. Duck fat is a tremendous fat for roasting vegetables, especially roast potatoes and is a wonderful ingredient in it’s own right. We have linked up to a BBC Good Food Recipe by Angela Nilsen, Ultimate Roast Potatoes, which may be of interest!
We also stumbled across a lovely website called Cooking Gorgeous whilst researching duck fat roasted potatoes and have linked to it as we really liked it’s look feel and recipes – not least the duck fat roasted potatoes recipe and felt this may be of interest!
At The Good Food Network, we are concerned mainly about taste and food, but if you did have some health concerns at the back of your mind, duck fat is surprisingly healthy because it is low in saturated fats.
We’ve also written a post on how to store duck confit, which may be of interest!
