KITCHEN PRACTICE 2 — A Small Batch of Confit
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Chapter: French Cookery 7 — Braising & Confit

TASK
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Make a small batch of confit (duck legs if available, or chicken
thighs as a home-scale substitute), salt-curing first and cooking
fully submerged in fat at a genuinely low, steady temperature.

WHAT TO DO
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1. Rub duck legs (or bone-in chicken thighs) generously with salt,
   crushed garlic, and fresh thyme. Place in a dish, cover, and
   refrigerate for at least a few hours, ideally overnight.
2. Rinse off the excess salt and pat the meat completely dry.
3. Place the meat in a pot just large enough to hold it snugly, and
   cover it completely with melted duck fat (or a neutral fat if
   duck fat isn't available).
4. Heat gently, using a thermometer to keep the fat at a genuinely
   low, steady temperature around 90°C (195°F) — well below a
   simmer's own visible bubbling.
5. Cook slowly for 2-3 hours (chicken thighs may take less time than
   duck legs), until the meat is meltingly tender and pulls away
   from the bone with almost no resistance.
6. Let the meat cool completely in the fat before removing, or store
   it exactly this way, fully submerged, in the fridge.
7. To serve, remove a piece from the fat and crisp it skin-side down
   in a hot, dry pan for a few minutes before serving.

WHAT TO EXPECT
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- During the cure, the salt should draw out visible moisture — you
  may see a small amount of liquid released in the dish.
- While cooking, the fat should stay gently, quietly hot — no
  visible bubbling or movement the way a simmering liquid would show.
- The finished meat should be extremely tender, pulling apart with
  almost no resistance, genuinely more tender than a typical braise
  produces in the same amount of time.
- When crisped afterward, the skin should turn genuinely crackly and
  golden, a real textural contrast against the soft meat underneath.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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Running the full cure-then-cook sequence, rather than skipping
straight to the slow cook, is what actually demonstrates confit as a
two-part technique rather than just "cooking meat in fat." The salt
cure and the fat submersion are doing genuinely different jobs —
one lowering the meat's own water content, the other sealing it away
from air once cooled — and only doing both together produces the
real dish this chapter describes.