Confit is a fancy food-word. If you’re eating confit, there’s probably Salad Périgourdine and beurre blanc on the plate, and a Côtes du Rhône or something on the table. And sure, confit is a high-point of fancy cooking, but its roots are humble. If European farmers could invent it and then use it for centuries, we fancy, modern people can use it in the fancy-free dishes we make in our fancy, modern kitchens. Let’s demystify!
The most traditional confit you’re likely to encounter today is duck confit; duck leg, fully submerged in duck fat, cooked at very low heat. This lack of air exposure and a constant, low heat assure that the meat won’t dry out or overcook - it will just get softer and tastier. Confit meats are the very definition of the word tender.
This process can be applied to many other foods. Just keep these two guidelines in mind:
- Fully cover the food with fat (duck fat, olive oil, grapeseed oil, bacon fat…)
- Cook at low heat for a long time (no higher than 250ºF, 2-10 hours)
A person of French heritage may grumble about this, but in my book, you’ll be justified calling any food made in this way a confit. Jim will write more about that duck confit I mentioned; for now, let’s look at vegetables, currently at their peak here in the Pacific Northwest.
Cherry Tomato Confit
Compared to their full-sized relatives, cherry tomatoes have an advantageous ratio of meat to juice. Slow-cooking a whole San Marzano tomato would produce a tasty bite, but it would ooze water. Cherry tomatoes just pop a little.
Find a market stand with bright, firm, sweet cherry tomatoes of whatever color appeals to you. Set aside any bruised, cracked, or otherwise compromised tomatoes for another use (such as immediate snacking). Remove the stems, wash the tomatoes well, then dry them thoroughly by tumbling gently in a clean kitchen towel.
Place them in a solid pot large enough so your tomatoes cover the whole bottom, but not in more than 2 or 3 layers. Sprinkle some salt over them - as much as you’d season fresh tomatoes with - then cover with enough cheap-and-clean olive oil to top every last tomato; any bits left sticking out will dry out.
Set the stove to medium heat for a minute or two (to speed up the initial heating process), then turn it down to low. Keep it there for about two hours, adjusting the heat so you get some tiny bubbles at the bottom of the pot, but the surface isn’t moving. Steady, quiet heat is what you’re after.
Side note: meat confit is usually done in the oven, where heat is gentler and more even. It’s a shame to fire up the whole oven for a small amount of vegetables, however, and the stovetop works fine. If you decide to make a huge batch in the oven, set the heat to 200ºF.
You’ll know the tomatoes are done when they’re slightly shriveled, the skin on some has lightly cracked, and they’re soft and juicy. (Don’t forget to let them cool a bit before you taste them. An important lesson it’s taken me many years to learn: oil can be furiously hot even when it looks perfectly still.)
Once it’s cooled down to room temp, store your tomato confit in a clean, tightly-sealing jar, making sure once again that the oil covers everything fully. It will keep in the fridge for months, improving your sandwiches and salads all winter long.
Garlic Confit
Garlic loves olive oil, and olive oil loves garlic. If the day ever comes when I have to name one flaw of garlic (and I hope that day never comes) I’d say that its flavor often lives in the shadow of its pungent power. The good news is, you can mellow garlic out quite a bit by cooking it over - you guessed it - low heat, for a long time.
Same basic principle as the cherry tomatoes: clean your garlic cloves, salt them a bit, cover with oil, cook on low heat for a few hours. You can turn up the heat a bit here, to maybe 1.5 or 2 out of 10, since garlic is pretty sturdy. A slightly shimmering oil is fine, as long as you stir now and then to make sure the bottoms of your cloves aren’t burning.
The garlic confit is done when it’s soft enough to mash with a fork. Store in its oil. (See note below.) Use in pasta dishes, on pizza, in rice bowls, as a robust side for roast chicken.
You know how I said olive oil loves garlic? Don’t dream of throwing out the oil once you eat your way through the veggies stored in it. People pay good money for flavored oils. Since introducing any additional foodstuffs into oil will shorten its shelf-life, keep it in the fridge. But, feel free to use it for cooking (where purity isn’t a must-have), salads, further confiting, etc.
UPDATE: A reader notes that garlic, due to its low acidity, is at risk for developing botulism when stored in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment. Commercially packaged garlic stored in oil is treated with acid first. To minimize your botulism risk, store the garlic separate from the oil and use it within a few weeks.
Bonus recipes: pearl onion confit and leek confit
Now that you have the general idea, try playing with it: confit some fresh (not frozen) pearl onions. Hint: peel them first.
Feel free to experiments with different kinds of oil or fat. Since the heat will be low, you can safely use butter, for instance. Leek confit calls for thinly sliced (up to 1/4”), lightly salted leeks cooked in butter, with the optional addition of a bit of water. If you’re after a texture closer to onion soubise, a rich and sweet marmalade, don’t cover the leeks completely. Just stir now and then, making sure they’re slowly cooking but never burning. Spread on toasted bread immediately, fold into eggs, or store in fat.
Like so many cooking methods, confit was originally a preservation method, child to necessity. Even in 2011, there’s nothing wrong with preserving in-season foods, especially when the preservation method transforms them into softer, sweeter, fancier versions of themselves.
