Squab leg confit?

[KennethT]

Has anyone tried doing a squab leg confit? If so, how long did you salt it and how long did you cook it in the fat??

I've done the moulard duck legs confit with decent success - salting for about 12 hours with Diamond Kosher (thanks Paula Wolfert!), then cooking SV (much easier cleanup) at 180degF for about 7 hours...

I'd assume that the squab legs would take considerably less time both salting and cooking since the thickness is maybe 1/3 that of a duck leg... also, I think a squab leg is a bit tenderer to start out with....

Any thoughts or experiences????

Thanks...

[Chris Amirault]

No experiences but your thoughts make sense to me. I'd be very wary of oversalting, and would cut that part down to three or four hours. Remember that the salt continues to have an effect throughout the meat long after you rinse it off.

Ditto on the fat cooking. I've always gone by the look and feel of the duck leg, specifically the flexibility and exposure of the thigh bone. You could simply cook the squab at a very low temp, thereby making overcooking much less likely.

[Recoil Rob]

I've done pheasant legs,here's the thread...

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...457&hl=pheasant

[ray goud]

No need for salting; just try Lora Brody's recipe for duck confit in the slow cooker (crock pot). One needs a decent amount of duck fat, but that's a good thing to keep around. I regularly do this with duck legs I get from Restaurant Depot (the book is Slow Cooker Cooking), and it comes out perfectly every time.

Ray

[KennethT]

so I did some experimenting this weekend... I salted the squab legs for about 3 hours using the Diamond Kosher -I didn't measure how much I used, but on the surface, it looked about the same as when I followed Paula Wolfert's advice for duck legs confit...

I then cooked the squab legs SV at 82.3degC (roughly 180degF) for about 3-1/2 hours...

Upon tasting, the saltiness was fine - I think 3 hours is the upper limit of how long to salt them.... and the texture was good - maybe 4 hours would be ok... but it was right at the cusp... for the squab legs, I think my personal preference is not completely falling off the bone (like for rilettes) - but I actually like with a bit of texture....