Today was all about the thirty-three duck legs (17.89 lbs.) that my partner in crime L. and I scored last week. I won’t publish the tale of acquisition here—too incriminating. Somehow, L. elected me to confit the whole batch. Since I am always looking for ways to procrastinate viz. my endless book, and since I made some confit de canard a couple of years back and vaguely remembered the details, I figured I could handle the assignment and agreed. So, thirty-three plump little disembodied limbs thawed for four days in my fridge, which allowed me to study some recipes and assemble equipment and other ingredients.

The equipment part was easy: a set of four glass baking dishes from IKEA ($6.99 per). The ingredients part was a challenge. To do confit right, you submerge the legs in rendered duck fat, and between L. and me we only had about three cups of the oozy, yellow stuff. So I started calling around: no one at Reading Terminal Market (Ochs and all the rest) could get either the fat or a pile of fatty scraps for me: “We don’t break down our own ducks.” A 2006 blog entry from some other brave soul reported buying a six-pound vat for $30 from Assouline and Ting, since reorganized as Assouline and Ross. But no luck: they are between duck-fat purveyors at the moment—”maybe next week.” Di Bruno’s used to carry D’Artagnan duck fat at the highway-robbery rate of $4.95 for 7 oz., but they have been “doing less business” with that supplier lately. FInally, I stumbled onto D’Angelo’s down in the Italian Market. Major discovery: welcoming proprietors, friendly little dog and cat, impressive taxidermied game animals, and duck fat for $10 per two-pound container. They also sell every other hard to get item I’ve been looking for: caul fat, rabbits, pork liver and probably natural sausage casing too. The girls were in heaven with all the live and dead animals. I bought six pounds of fat.

So a couple of evenings back, with D. helping out, I started working on the legs. We were following Anthony Bourdain’s advice without much reflection, when a phone call to B. to brag about our heroic undertaking and spirit of fearless adventure brought us up short. Bourdain tells you to season the legs and refrigerate overnight, then pour in the fat and put in an oven at 375° for about an hour with some sprigs of herbs and garlic. B. was aghast: no sprigs, and no high heat—low heat for a long time! Much hasty research. Deep confusion ensued: stovetop vs. oven; temperatures from 220° to 300° (to Bourdain’s typical balls-to-the-wall extreme); dry rubbed with all sorts of cumin and stuff; packed in serious quantities of salt for a true cure or just seasoned a bit… A call to R.: in the restaurant they cure it in salt and sugar. Later, I learned that L. had tea-cured her last batch (pictured here in the lovely standing troop in the pot). Finally, the save by Judy Rodgers: there’s nothing as valuable as a cookbook that explains method in detail. Not that I really followed her advice, but at least I knew the stakes. I settled on: 36-hour salt cure, rinse, 2-3 hrs. in an oven at 275° with some parsley and a few garlic cloves thrown in for good measure. 

As it turned out, even with all the extra fat I didn’t have enough for a complete submersion of the legs, but they were nearly covered, which seems to have worked. After I pulled them from the oven I fished out a batch for eating in the near future, and strained the fat from those to pour over the rest of them for longer retention. Broiled a few for dinner and shredded them into buckwheat kasha. No complaints.