Sunday, December 30, 2007

Sous Vide Duck Legs

When I first learned about sous vide I thought that the premise was that as long as you cook something at the exact temperature that you want for the internal temperature of the meat you can't overcook anything. However, all of my recent sous vide dishes have been cooked for no more than 1 hour so I didn't know if this really mattered or not. I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class with Wylie Dufresne who did in fact give a pseudo-sous vide demonstration. During the class I asked Wylie his thoughts on this. He said that even at a low temperature there is still a chemical process going on with the protein and that the timing is essential to the dish. Of course, I am neither a scientist nor a professional, so I will defer to the experts on this.

Sous vide duck legs marked our first experiment with an extended cooking time. We cooked two legs for 8 hours at 178 degrees. Before placing them in the vacuum bag, we removed the skins and excess fat. Any fat that we were easily able to remove from the skin was placed in the bag with the legs, for both flavor and moisture. In addition to some salt and pepper we seasoned the meat with a few sprigs of fresh parsley, thyme and rosemary (whatever is fresh an available will work great). After dropping the legs into the water, we made ourselves comfortable and watched a few movies. Not a very involved process at all.

We decided to save the skin, c'mon it's flavor country, and attempted to make a crispy wafer from each one. We left them in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator until there was about 40 minutes left on the duck. After removing the skin from the refrigerator we salted each side generously and cooked them, one at a time, in a very hot pan. We used a bacon press to keep it flat and press out the excess fat. Between the two pieces of skin we rendered out at least 1 1/2 cups of fat, we saved it for another time. Both skins came out great, although I think the second skin, which was cooked on a medium high heat, was a bit better.

To go with the duck we did a simple dish of roasted root vegetables, perfect for a cold winter night. We used a mixture of potatoes, fennel, celery, red onion and garlic tossed with olive oil, gray salt and fresh ground pepper. Not wanting to waste the fresh herbs, we topped it off with some thyme as well. This was cooked at 450 degrees for about an hour, tossing them periodically.

After removing the duck legs from the water, we gave them a quick sear in the now well oiled pan that we crisped the skin in.


I am starting to think that sous vide is an idiot proof method, assuming you have adequate heat control. Everything came out great, the duck fell right off of the bone and the meat was very tender. The crispy skin made an excellent compliment to the texture of the meat and the root vegetables go great with any kind of meat on a cold night. Next time, and there will be a next time, we have decided to try a lower temperature over the same time period, and maybe in the future we will also try this with a shorter cooking time as well.

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