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I'd like to try making duck confit, but I'm wondering whether using fats other than the actual duck fat is, like, sacrilege, or something. Because frankly, where in the world do you get the amount of duck fat called for in a duck confit without roasting 40 ducks in a row first? Googling, I see substitutions such as olive oil, canola, lard, etc. Is this okay? Do they work as well in terms of preserving the duck? Is one better than another? Help?

I am trying to make a bacon mousse and am a little concerned with how the texture is going to work out. Is there anyone out there who can help me with this problem? and also I am a rabid garde manger enthusiast and would love to hear any stories or recipes involving garde manger food.

I've been dying to get my hands on some lardons like I get when I'm in France. Especially now that cassoulet season is approaching, I'd like to get the real stuff. Thick-cut bacon just doesn't seem to do it. Can anyone recommend any place to get them in NYC? Thanks in advance, Cheers!

Ok, I have a weird, but good desert idea that I want to explore. I can handle the fried egg part of the equation, but have no chocolate experience for the bacon. If you were going to make chocolate into the shape and look of bacon how would you do it? I was thinking you melt dark, reg, and white chocolate and pour out on wax paper. Swirl or streak with a chopstick and then chill. Remove when hardened and cover with a touch of simple syrup foam to look fried. Will that work?

Hi all! I'm new here. I'm an amateur cook from Stockholm, Sweden, sometimes with ideas far loftier than my skills. My current project: I'm doing pork belly confit. I have some slabs of pork belly brining in the fridge right now in a standard sugar/salt brine. Tomorrow I'm planning on slowly confiting them in duck fat. I don't want a rilette type end result, rather I'm after whole confited pieces. After maturing in duck fat in the fridge for a week or two, the confit could be carved, heated and served with...puy lentils perhaps. I could have gotten pork fat instead of duck fat (cheaper!) but it was just too easy to grab a big can of duck fat when I visited my lokal market yesterday. I've never done this type of confit before (but I have done rilettes). Anything I should think of? Temperature? Cooking time? For duck confit I've seen 190F/90C oven for up to 10-12 hours and I'm assuming the same will apply for my pork. (I also have a big chunk of tough cow marinating in red wine and and the usual aromatics in the fridge. I'm planning on braising it in it's own juices in an aluminium foil packet.)

Hi All, Does anyone have this recipe from Gourmet Magazine? I'm supposed to teach an informal cooking class next Wednesday and thought it would be the perfect dish to start with. This particular Gourmet has a peach tart on the cover and has recipes from Thomas Keller in it. Help? Thanks! Patti

http://www.baconsalt.com/ Bacon-flavored salt! As soon as I read the words, I began salivating...

Went to the Manchester festival and had Heston's Summer (there was no summer) treats (see here http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=4891&st=698) Does anyone know how to candy raw bacon in a way that makes it pasturised? I presume a stock syrup & a dehydrator were used?

Hebert's Meats ( I went to the Richmond at 610 location near the Galleria) is carrying Poffenberger's Bellville Sausages and they are delish!

When I was in Portland OR this spring, I had a chance to get some grass-fed lamb shoulder, which I kept frozen until this past week. I defrosted it thinking that lamb shoulder might have the same beneficial effect on sausages that pork shoulder does, so I ground it up for merguez. I also went back to my books to see if there were any interesting ideas out there for merguez, and I couldn't find too much. Ruhlman's Charcuterie has a recipe that requires roasted red peppers, which might be interesting for some but wouldn't suit my needs. So I ended up winging it. I trimmed very little fat off the shoulder, added no extra fat, and diced the meat. I then made a seasoning batch with salt, sugar, garlic, cayenne, cumin, black pepper, paprika, and small amounts of cinnamon, clove, and allspice; the salt and sugar is in proportion with other sausages I've made, but the rest of the spices are stronger than usual. (I foolishly didn't write the proportions down.) Finally, I ground, beat, and stuffed it following the guidelines I've learned from Ruhlman (keep it cold, cold, cold, basically). I don't have any lamb casings, so I used standard pork casings and have fatter-than-ideal links. I really like the finished product. It has an intensity that I'd want a merguez to have; as far as I'm concerned, when I'm having spicy lamb sausage, I want it to taste like spicy lamb sausage. It's also got a swell mouthfeel thanks to the shoulder meat and fat, leading me to believe that a fear of lamb flavor has encouraged recipe writers to cut the lamb with beef or -- bizarrely -- pork, to the harm of the sausage. Finally, breaking down a shoulder is a lot less work than dealing with a leg of lamb and all that silverskin and tendon. Are there any other folks out there who make their own merguez? What recipes do you use? Seasonings? Cuts? And do you try to hide the lambiness or bring it out -- and how?

https://www.vosgeschocolate.com/product/bac...otic_candy_bars Has anyone tried this? I'd buy them buy the case if I had some first-hand reports that actually suggest they "work".

This was mentioned (April '07 Food Arts) in a dessert created by Christophe Michalak. Has anyone ever done this? How is it done? Can't get my head completely around it...

Hey everybody! I just bought Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie and, obviously, I'm chomping at the bit to try on his recipes. Does anyone know where one can find "pink salt" (salt with nitrites) and all cuts of non-commercial pork (belly, blood, hocks, etc.), in the Montreal area? On a side note, has anyone ever seen a Cuisinart Stand Mixer in any shop in Montreal? I can only find KitchenAid. Thanks!

First post all, and glad to be here! I want to make tuna confit this weekend. I have never confited anything. I understand the process, but does anybody have tips and tricks? Especially in cooking afterward to get it warm again. Thanks in advance and nice to stop lurking.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you encased a slice of bacon, and a raw egg, in a clear plastic box, and let it sit for a year? This guy did.

Is a charcuterier a maker of charcuterie? Is a retailer of charcuterie also a charcuterier?

I remember reading a while ago in the Cooking>Charcuterie thread a mention of pictures of chrisamiraults Duck Breast Bacon. I would like to see these but after many unsuccessful searches I am asking for help. Anyone point me in the right direction? Many thanks. Norman

Our great state, the one of 10,000 lakes (at least) has more meat markets that make their own sausages and bacon that you can count on the digits of all of my extended family. But, what is the deal with ultra thick bacon? It is like smoked pork that hasn't been cooked long enough, and then fried. Then there's the average supermarket thin, which crisps too crisp and way too fast. But, I have hit on two perfect bacons. Hackenmuellers in Robbinsdals will cut to order, unlike a mess of places that only sell cryovaced stuff in what they deem (IMHO, too thick) the proper thickness. And, then there is McDonald's Meats in Clear Lake (click). They have the thickness perfect. The right amount of fat renders out, you don't feel like you are eating smoked pork that hasn't reached it's prime temp. They are "da bomb" (according to the kids) for breakfasts and for BLT's. Just this last week, I had the opportunity to sample Fraboni's bacon. It would have won an award with me had it not been so thick. Now, for me, bacon should be thick enough to stand on it's own, but not TOO thick. There's something to the flavour/thickness ration in my mind. If I want smoked pork, I'll smoke a butt and pull it. If I want bacon, I want bacon. Perhaps I'm alone?

Anyone doing diy link sausage- please point me in the right direction to find some interesting combos for sausage making. I've been tasked with coming up with 6 interesting sausages this week, both exciting and intimidating as I've never made sausage before! We have a kitchenaid mixer with the grinding and stuffing accessories, and I've picked up some casings as well. Thanks in advance for your ideas and suggestions! Warmly, Shai

My boyfriend's room-mate is not much of a cook. He eats sausage (supermarket grade Italian sausage) and broccoli for dinner every day, if he is the one cooking dinner. Sausage cooked in frying pan, broccoli boiled. No exaggeration. After my boyfriend boasted about my cooking ability (especially my self-proclaimed innovativeness with mundane ingredients), his room-mate raised a friendly on-going Iron Chef challenge for me. Not-so-secret ingredients: Sausage and broccoli. My first attempt occurred the other day. I started at 10pm, and used only what was available in the house. Luckily, I had a few things that I had left there (sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sirricha, honey, ginger, shallots, garlic). I made broccoli/sausage noodle stir fry. The noodles were those North-American style instant ramen-type noodles. Boyfriend and room-mate proclaimed the meal the most excellent ever cooked in their house. So, I'm having them over for dinner sometime soon, and I want to do much better. I've thought about making my own sausage, though I don't have one of those sausage-makers. I could only make the filling and then form into patties, or crumble (I do this from time to time). Things like pastas, stuffed pastas, lasagna, pizza immediately come to mind. But those seem almost too easy. I could roast the broccoli, or make it into tempura. But how to make the best sausage complement? Does anyone want to help me play this game?

Bean And Sausage Soup A very nice soup for a cold wintery day 1 onion chopped 2 tbspcanola oil 1 lbkielbasa sausage, diced 4 large garlic cloves, chopped (7) 1 bulb fennel; chopped 2 carrots; chopped 10 large Button mushrooms; chopped celery heart with leaves 1 small bag spinach leaves 900 ml box chicken broth water; plus 2 tbsp redi-base turkey stock 15 oz cans can navy beans 15 oz can can diced tomatoes with herbs 500ml ctner sour cream crushed red peppers; heaping bunch fresh dill; minced Heat oil in heavy large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage and garlic and sauté until sausage is lightly browned, about 8 minutes. Add in crushed peppers,fennel,onion, carrot, mushrooms and celery,;cook about 5 minutes more. Add broth, water, turkey stock navy beans with their juices and spinach. Simmer until flavors blend and soup thickens slightly, about 20 minutes. Stir in the sour cream and dill simmer 5 more minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into bowls. 10-3 cup servings approx Replacing the spinach with cabbage works well. could use more sour cream ( RG2000 )

So I am partnering with a local pork producer who specializes in amazing berkshire pork but also raises lamb and some grassfed beef (DWFarms). I have offered to make them some sausage recipes to sell at the farmers market. The sausage they have made so far has some texture issues. I assumed that being a leaner pork and a very small farm they were using mostly scrap and did not follow the proper ratios for sausage. My first batch with a proper lean meat to fat ratio as well as a batch with an increased fat ratio also had this texture issue, dry and crumbly. Obviously it is a fat emulsification issue. I tried a mousseline route with heavy cream but no panada. Besides the next step of adding a panada does anyone have any suggestions? Adding any pork besides theirs is not a possibility.

July 4th is here and now. I want to buy a few different kinds of sausage for a July 4th BB. So, where is everyone's favorite place to buy sausage? I tried many different kinds, from many places, but nothing really great. Thank you and have a great July 4th. Eric

I'm working on creating a vegetarian bacon for a rather elaborate plate. This is my idea for the process (try and follow): Using a long, rectangular terrine bold, I'll fill it with store-bought egg whites and steam it. I'll then thinly slice the big regtangular bar with a sandwich slicer so that I'm left with paper-thin, long, rectangular slices of cooked egg white that very closely resemble the fatty part of a bacon strip. I'll lay that on the plate. I'll then create a spice mixture that I feel closely resembles the flavour of bacon (smoked paprika, brown sugar, a bit of cayenne, a bit of hawaiian salt, ground sezchuan pepper, all spice, etc. [lots of 'red' spices]). I'll sprinkle the spice mixture in 'lines' of varying width along the egg white 'fat'. Voila, fake bacon! Should work pretty well, shouldn't it?

I love duck leg confit. I have never made my own, though, and the one time I bought one from my butcher, it wasn't as good as some I've had from high-end commercial canned or jarred types. But it's been a long time since I had a really delicious, well-seasoned, satisfying example of a store-bought, canned or jarred duck leg confit. What is your favorite confit? And how is its pricing? I assume small producer-type products can also be found in certain Paris shops, so do include, if that's the case for your favorite. Thanks!