Duck confit with sauce agrodolce

Here we take a cornerstone of many autumn/winter menus, confit of duck leg. Originally, from the French region of Gascony and used as a way of preserving meat over winter, you may also see goose and even lamb shoulder treated in the same way. 

When it comes to duck meat, most people automatically think ‘fat’ – and it’s true, while high in protein like other poultry, duck meat does have a high fat content. However, it is primarily ‘healthier’ mono-unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, rather than saturated ones. And most of the fat is retained in the skin, so if you’d like a lighter version of this dish, just take the skin off before preparing it. 

The fats within the duck itself are also rendered out by cooking the duck in duck fat! While this may sound counterintuitive at first, by cooking it low ’n’ slow in its own fats, the cut releases and renders its internal muscular and external barding fats, so in the end you end up with a cooked piece of meat, delicious, unctuous, less fat content and literally falling of the bone. 

By infusing the pre-rendered fats with aromatics such as garlic, rosemary, peppercorns, bay leaves, orange zest and root ginger (to give just some examples) you are adding background flavour notes and nutritional value too. 

It’s worth mentioning some of the other nutrition aspects of duck. It’s high in B vitamins and contains a range of minerals, including selenium, phosphorus, iron, zinc and copper. Selenium is particularly high (around 26% of your recommended daily amount) and selenium plays an important number of roles in the body, including being important for reproduction, thyroid gland function, DNA production, and protecting the body from damage caused by free radicals and from infection. 

We serve the confit of duck here with our pommes boulangère, wilted greens and sauce agrodolce – an Italian version of sweet and sour. 

Serve the duck with pommes boulangère and wilted greens and drizzle with the sauce