Confit de Canard

Have you seen these in the shop and wondered what to do with them? Its duck legs in aspic.

Buy a tin and a selection of root veg and leeks.

On top of the ducks legs is a layer of duck fat. Scrape the fat out of the tin into a saucepan, no need to use it all save some for your roast potatoes on Sunday.

Chop your vegetables into good size chunks and fry in the hot fat.


I like to take my duck off the bone, its up to you,
Add about half a litre of stock (or water and a chicken stock cube), enough to cover the veg. Bring to the boil, add the duck and simmer, takes about 1 hour, as soon as the veg is cooked its ready.

If you want to add dumplings now's the time.

Suet free dumplings, Mix flour (use a sachet of levure chimique, baking powder if not using self raising flour), salt, mustard powder (optional) and a little water, mix into a dough, in mine and Paul's opinion these are nicer than suet dumplings.
Add your dumplings, remember they will swell to 2 - 3 times the size so be careful. cook for a further 15 minutes.

Serve, this will feed about 6 people, a lot depends on how much veg you use, or in our house food for 3 days or maybe freeze some, I would suggest that you use up the dumplings and make fresh when you reheat the confit, they can go hard otherwise.