Cassoulet

Beans and preserved meat baked for hours, where the crust that forms on top is broken back into the dish several times.

Pork, Duck. Not vegetarian — contains a sausage whose meat the source does not name, duck, pork, sausage casings, which are gut unless it says otherwise.

Ingredients

• 800 g dried haricot beans, soaked overnight
• 4 pieces duck confit, as on its own page
• 400 g Toulouse sausage, as on its own page
• 400 g pork belly, in thick pieces
• 200 g pork rind
• 1 ham hock
• 2 onions, studded with cloves
• 1 head garlic
• 3 carrots
• 2 tablespoons tomato purée
• a bouquet of thyme, bay and parsley stalks
• salt and pepper

Method

1. THE CRUST IS BROKEN BACK IN, SEVEN TIMES BY SOME ACCOUNTS AND AT LEAST THREE BY ANY. A skin forms on the surface as it bakes; pushed down under the liquid with the back of a spoon it thickens the whole dish and a new one forms. Left alone, you get one crust and a thin soup beneath it. This is the single thing that makes a cassoulet rather than a bean casserole.
2. SALT AT THE END, as with any dried bean -- and here there is an extra reason: the confit, the hock and the sausage are all salty already, so the pot is tasted only once they have given up what they have.
3. THE BEANS ARE COOKED SEPARATELY FIRST, in water with the rind and aromatics, and that water becomes the liquid of the dish. Beans cooked from raw among the meat take so long that everything else falls apart.
4. Beans soaked overnight and drained, the soaking water thrown away.
5. Pork rind, hock, onions, garlic, carrots and the bouquet into a large pot with the beans and water to cover by 5 cm.
6. Brought to the boil, skimmed for 10 minutes, then simmered 1 hour 15 until the beans are tender but not collapsing.
7. The hock lifted out, the meat stripped and kept. The vegetables and bouquet discarded, the rind kept and chopped. The cooking liquid kept -- all of it.
8. Pork belly browned in a pan and the sausage browned, both lifted out. The confit warmed enough to separate the pieces and its fat kept.
9. A deep earthenware dish rubbed with a cut garlic clove. Chopped rind over the base, then a layer of beans, then the meats distributed through, then the rest of the beans.
10. Tomato purée stirred into the bean liquid and poured over until it just covers. Pepper over. A spoonful of the confit fat on top.
11. Into a 150C oven, uncovered, for 3 hours.
12. THE CRUST PUSHED DOWN with the back of a spoon after the first hour, and again every 30 to 40 minutes, four or five times in all. Hot bean liquid added down the side if it drops below the beans.
13. The last crust left intact for the final 30 minutes. Rested 20 minutes before serving, and better reheated the next day.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes