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Active Time
2 hrs
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Total Time
2 days
My recipe was adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I've changed the meats (a lot) and the seasonings (a bit). I've also tinkered with cooking times and sequence.
我ngredients
Makes 10 servings
Special Equipment
DAY 1 Act 1: Nasty Work
Step 1
Bring 5 quarts water to a boil in an 8-quart heavy pot. Boil beans, uncovered, 1 1/2 minutes, then turn off heat and let them soak 50 minutes.
Step 2
While beans soak, do all the really disgusting work with the meat. Put pork rind in a 3-quart saucepan three-fourths full of cold water and bring to a boil. Boil pork rind 1 minute. Drain and rinse under cold running water, then do it again. (Sometimes you know it's ready because it grows nipples.) After draining, cut the truly repulsive boiled pork rind into pieces that are big enough to identify (about 2 inches), so you can fish them out before serving.
Step 3
Scrape off and discard fat from confit duck legs and shred meat (the more it shreds the better). [Editors' note: Those who have no problem with identifiable meat in their food might want to keep the shredding to a minimum.]
Act 2: Slightly Less Nasty Work
Step 4
Put parsley stems, thyme, whole cloves, and 8 garlic cloves in cheesecloth and tie into a bundle to make a bouquet garni.
Step 5
First seasoning of beans: Add rind pieces, bacon halves, 1 cup onion, bouquet garni, and salt to beans. Simmer, covered, 1 1/4 hours, skimming regularly. Cool, uncovered.
Step 6
While beans simmer, brown mutton bones. Do this by heating goose fat in enameled cast-iron pot over moderate heat until it smokes, then cook mutton bones, stirring occasionally, until browned, about 5 minutes. Set them aside on a plate. Drop remaining 2 cups onion into pot and brown that, too. This can take as long as 15 minutes. Stir regularly.
Step 7
Peel seed, and chop tomatoes.
Act 3: Nasty Gets Nice
Step 8
Flavoring the meat: Add browned bones and shredded duck to onion. Add bay leaves, beef stock, tomatoes, remaining 4 garlic cloves, white wine, and pepper. Simmer, covered, 1 1/2 hours. Cool to room temperature,uncovered.
Step 9
Put pot with meat and pot with beans in refrigerator, covered, overnight.
DAY 2 Act 1: Crescendo (1 hr)
Step 10
Poke holes in sausage with a fork and grill it slowly in a well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderately low heat 20 minutes (to get the fat out). (Sausage should still be slightly undercooked on the inside when you're done.) Transfer to a cutting board and cool slightly. Slice into thin (1/4-inch) rounds.
Step 11
Remove and discard bones and bay leaves from meat pot. Remove duck with a slotted spoon and put on a plate. Reserve cooking liquid remaining in pot.
Step 12
Remove bacon from beans and cut into tiny, fat-free pieces. Put pieces on a plate and discard remaining bacon fat. Discard pork rind and bouquet garni from beans.
Step 13
Julia Child says: "Now is the time to drain the beans and dump them into the ample, leftover meat cooking juices." In my experience, there is nothing left to drain. What you are looking at, when you stare into the bean pot, is a fairly solid wall of beans, with some gluey goop in between. So, pour reserved meat cooking juices into bean pot. Bring to a simmer over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, and simmer 5 minutes, skimming any scum. Then turn off heat and let sit another 5 minutes.
Act 2: Final Assembly
Step 14
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Step 15
Spread a layer of beans on bottom of enameled cast-iron pot. Layer half of sausage and bacon on top, then another layer of beans, then half of duck (and any mutton), then another layer of beans, et cetera, ending with a layer of beans. Then add enough remaining liquid from bean pot until beans are submerged. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and parsley.
Step 16
Bring the whole thing to a simmer, uncovered, over moderately low heat. Then stick it in oven 20 minutes. Break through bread crumbs in several places with a spoon, allowing the liquid to mess up the look of the thing. Then reduce heat to 350°F and leave it in another 40 minutes. Serve very hot.
How would you rate Michael Lewis's Cassoulet de Canard?
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Reviews (30)
Back to Top我've made Julia's recipe a couple of times and used some of the same shortcuts in this recipe. When I saw this recipe, I was very happy to give it a try. I've since made this five or six times. Yes, it costs a ridiculous amount of money and time to make, and a complicated finicky recipe. But it's well worth it.
kjparis
San Francisco, CA
2/24/2014
This is the only cassoulet recipe I make. Nothing else compares. Since its cassoulet, its forgiving and open to modification. I gave up using the pork rind years ago. Its too hard to find and doesn't add anything. I use whatever white wine is lying around, and omit the bones if the butcher doesn't have any. But I always cook the beans first until nearly soft, and then braise the meat (sometimes pork, sometimes lamb) with the sauce. The layers are just undescribably good. No short versions of cassoulet have as much depth.
venus00
10/16/2013
我make this once each fall and it is WELL worth the effort. I have tried other cassoulets, foreign and domestic, and nothing comes close. It also comes out slightly different each time depending on the amounts of bacon, lamb, sausage used. All are fabulous.
uleedog
Virginia
2/17/2011
We loved this recipe. We did the recipe with two cooks over a weekend - sharing the work (along with the wine) which made it much easier. We followed the recipe very closely (especially skimming off the fat), but we'd suggest tweaking a couple of small things. Perhaps a little less bay, a little more thyme, and we might cook the beans a bit less next time ... thank goodness for a publicly funded health care system - we're worried about our cholesterol levels after this fabulous meal!
Cooks_in_Toronto
Toronto Canada
2/12/2011
我有我的眼睛在这道菜一段时间。我made the confit myself, and my 7 year old (after tasting it) said "can we have this for dinner every night?" Having never made cassoulet before nor having it, I followed the directions precisely. The aromas that filled my house for almost two days were, well... I think my 7 year old says it best again: "it's like heaven!". So final assembly and in the oven she goes, and we are all waiting with great anticipation, only to be sorely disappointed. The beans had not softened up completely, the duck that had been melt-in-your-mouth delicious was much less stellar in the end. The richly flavored sauce didn't hold up either. Even now, 4 hours after dinner, the dish is in the oven, barely simmering (like when I made the confit at 250F, and still the beans aren't any softer, altho the flavor does appear to have improved). In tracing my steps and re-reading the recipe, I am at a loss when it comes to figuring out what exactly I did or where I went wrong that turned what should have been an amazing dish into scrap. I would love to make this again, but have no idea where I could improve because it appears to have fundamentally failed. -Defeated In Seattle :(
lcordell
Seattle, WA
11/20/2010
This for me was a blast to make, lots of work but it was the real deal and worth it. I followed the directions to the letter and it was fantastic. Great presentation. I prepared the Duck Confit recipe from Epicusious 1999 and used the entire duck leg in the Cassoulet. outstanding! I had a dinner party for 9 so I had to buy a 9 1/4 quart Le Creuset Oval. I was able to get the Garlic sausage from "The Three Little Pigs" web page. The only variation was I used a whole lamb shank as I couldn't get mutton bones and added the meat after browning. Rave reviews!
jamesmccord
Greenwich, CT
2/21/2010
Having just completed making Julia Child's multi-page version with duck, lamb and actual Toulouse sausage (Marcel & Henri brand from SF), I appreciate what Michael Lewis was attempting to do. Wish I had read his before I embarked on this monthlong journey, as I confit'd the duck myself earlier this month. Michael's colorful descriptions may irritate some sensibilities, but I agree about the disgusting duck rind. Had I read Michael's, I would have kept i n bigger pieces for easy removal instead of little triangles (per Julia) so that they get lost in amongst the beans. Fishing them out, once the beans were cooked, was awful, as I couldn't bring myself to leave them in.
mswindycty
Chicago, IL
1/31/2010
One of the fussiest, most disorganized, hard-to-read recipes I've ever made. Still, having made cassoulet before I wanted to try it since it was adapted from Julia's recipe. The dish was delicious, but there are lots of cassoulet recipes that are easier and just as delicious. It's farm food, for heavn's sake. It's a pot of nicely flavored white beans with some sausage and duck confit baked in. No reason to get so baroque about it. Departures: I never shred the duck; everyone gets an identifiable leg, skinless, on the bone. The whole bottle of wine added to the stock would be way too much liquid, I didn't use it. Mutton bones? Ha, not in any grocery in my country. And why boil the pork fat first? Just skim the beans as you cook them with the fat. One hour of cooking wasn't enough to heat it through, expect 1.5 hours. Last thing: find a better recipe.
Anonymous
Connecticut
11/1/2009
Loved making this, loved eating it. Next time I'm gonna make my own duck confit-buying it was too damn expensive. I also used duck fat instead of goose fat - couldn't find it!
mikeyone
Santa Monica, CA
10/16/2009
我realize the chef was attempting humour, and I thought cooking should be enjoyable, I found the grade school descriptions extremely juvenile and unnecessary. The traditional recipe in itself is a lesson in degrees, you do this, do that, add such and so ingredients the best you can find and give it time to meld together. The ingredients listed are all complimentary of the dish, and outcome is very nice. Not many people have goose fat around, but it is an extremely tasty cooking by-product which makes it really special if you have it.
Anonymous
4/6/2009
Delicious!
torney
Reno, Nevada
2/22/2009
最近我邀请一个毗湿奴派信徒(通常的数量known as Hare Krishnas) to a dinner party at my house. For those of you who dont know it, Vaishnavas practice strict vegetarianism as part of their religion. I am a practical guy and as far as vegetarianism goes Im ok to with the occasional bending of the rules. A little chicken broth here, a beef bullion cube there, maybe a little pancetta in the salad. But Im sorry, this recipe just goes too far. For starters, did you know canard is French for duck? It sounded like some type of squash to me but its not. But I was already at the store and had seven Hare Krishnas coming for dinner in 6 hours so I went with it. Hey, chicken broth, duck, almost the same thing. Well I knew I was in trouble when the butcher started cracking the mutton bones. How the hell am I going to explain this to Goswami? I wondered aloud. As I made this recipe, I got more and more worried. I guess I should have read ahead before I chose this meal. The part entitled Nasty Work was a dead giveaway. You never see that in real vegetarian recipes, except maybe for ones with pumpkin in them. The dinner party was pretty much the disaster that youd imagine. My Vaishnava friends are very gracious and no one said anything. But they just moved the canard around the plate and cleaned me out of bread. So a word to the wise. This recipe, though delicious, is NOT vegetarian.
funghi202
Boston, MA
2/14/2009
Meant to say as well: I used unsmoked pork belly and a small ham hock (with skin) to cook with the beans rather than the pork rind and bacon, since I had both handy, but it gave the same effect, I think, without quite as much of a mess.
cosbysl
San Francisco, CA
1/5/2009
We made a half recipe of this, halving everything but the duck confit and the spices. It still filled a 6.5-quart casserole and was definitely more than 5 servings! It fed 4 adults with leftovers enough, probably, for 4 more. We made a few small changes--duck fat instead of goose fat, soaked the beans in cold water overnight--but the biggest change was that I cooked the soaked beans and the meat mixture in the morning, and then did the deboning, assembly, and second cooking at night--8 hours is 8 hours, right? So it didn't take two days, unless you count the bean-soaking time. I was very pleased with the outcome and am looking forward to the leftovers.
cosbysl
San Francisco, CA
1/5/2009
Made this last year to bring to a football tailgate (!), and tripled the recipe. Got the confit mail order from one provider, the Sausicon Toulouse from another. I ended up using duck fat instead of goose fat, but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely. Took a long time, cost a small fortune, and was not headache free. I used an enormous cast iron dutch oven. Problem was, it wouldn't fit in my oven! Off to the store to buy a slightly less gigantic dutch oven, which worked out better. Finished it off, then packed it into the pickup for a trip from Boston to West Point for the game. Reheated over a propane fire ring and served to good reviews. Who cares what they thought; I certainly liked it and would make again.
Anonymous
Boston, MA
10/19/2008
