Today was the confit showdown, pitting sous-vide against my tried and true crock pot method which I've been using for several years. After reading this thread and others, as well as the recipe in Paula's new book (which arrived Thursday!) I went out on a limb with several changes to my technique, and I changed duck from Muscovy (from Grimaud Farms) to Pekin (from a local butcher). After reading Paula's recipe I wanted to try something other than Muscovy, had a hard time finding Moulard but I think I have that solved for next time. I dry-brined using a new cure. I've gone back and forth between the 'green salt' in "Bouchon" and my regular cure, 50/50 Morton's kosher and sugar with black peppercorns and fresh bay leaf. This cure was 4 cups Diamond Crystal salt, 2 cups sugar, a bunch of coarsely cracked black pepper and about half a package of fresh bay leaf coarsely chopped in a spice mill. I had 29 Pekin legs and I covered them liberally top and bottom with the mixture and then placed them in a single layer in a vacuum bag (9 to a bag) and then vacuumed them. My old method was multiple layers in whatever storage bin was large enough; I found that with that approach the bottom layer got more brine as the liquid accumulated, so using the bag proved to be both space saving in the fridge as well as more uniform. After bagging 9 legs I realized that the bottoms were a little light on cure so I modified the approach to first put some cure in the bag and then coat the leg and then lay it on the salt layer. Worked great. Bags went into the fridge at about 8 pm last night and this morning at 7 I rinsed and got ready to split the batch between sous-vide and the crock pots. For the sous-vide legs (12 of them), I split the legs between four bags. I put a couple of chunks of cold fat on the skin side and then laid it in the bag and then put some chunks of fat on the flesh side once it was in the bag. In hindsight, while this looked great on the counter (fat pressed tightly to the duck), as soon as it was in the water it didn't matter, so next time I'll be less concerned about a single layer and careful placement. In fact, the more duck you can cram into the bag the less wiggle room once in the water and things start to melt, plus I think you'd get more even contact throughout the cooking process. Bagged duck went into the water bath that was preheated to 82.2 degrees C at 7:30; following Paula's advice for Pekin ducks, I planned on six hours in the water. The rest of the ducks went into two crock pots with melted duck fat set on low. As is typical for this approach, I found that the bottom layer of duck cooked faster than the top and I took part of the batch out after about five hours and the balance at six. I was a little nervous about the sous-vide batch as I didn't plan to take the ducks out of the bag until the holiday dinner a week from now, so I'd not be able to 'see' as much. At six hours they were tender to the squeeze, so I took them out and put them into a cooler full of ice water. Well, three of the four bags made it. I had a seal failure on the fourth when taking it out, so I got to compare the two methods side by side. The sous-vide legs had less shrinkage and no browning at all on the skin (I get some in the crock pot). I notice that the Pekin has much thinner skin than the Muscovy, not sure how well it will handle the storage and prep, so there was some tearing of the crock pot legs due to handling. Not a problem with the sous-vide legs. I bagged the crock pot legs 6 to a bag and then filled the bag about 1/3 full of melted duck fat. Using my Mini-Vac pro packer I set to manual I carefully removed as much air as possible without sucking too much fat past the sealer. I found (accidentally) that this unit there's a positioning bar that acts as a barrier to the fat that seeped out of the bag, so on subsequent bags I let the vacuum run a bit longer. Both batches smelled great, and the 9 sous-vide legs were left in the original bags with their fat and cooking liquid. I bagged three bags at a time into a larger storage bag for aging this week in the fridge, we'll eat them next Sunday when I'll provide additional tasting notes. My next batch I hope to obtain some Moulard from Preferred Meats; from one of Paula's post they might be the best west coast supplier. I took a bunch of pictures as well and I'll add them later when I have more time.
