11 Best Foods That Work Best For The Confit Process

There is something magical about confit. Perhaps it is the bit of time travel inherent in the process of preservation: dishes can remain delicious for days and weeks later — and some meat confit can last months. Confit as a process is an old one, dating back to the 15th century, according to Masterclass, when hunters came home with game birds and preserved the legs and wings by salting them and storing in fat. The basics of the French confit technique have broadened considerably from those origins. 

Today, confit can describe any fatty piece of meat that has been salted and cooked slowly in a fat bath. Meat can be cooked in lard or in fat like olive oil for an easy substitution for duck fat confit. Vegetables and fruits can also be the star subjects of the confit treatment. Follow a few fundamental rules (we'll help you avoid some basic mistakes!) and you too can preserve and elevate the best of any season.

People who don't eat meat for religious reasons have long enjoyed some of the best slow-cooking techniques for meat without eating pork. Duck is an excellent substitute for pork. For example, the University of Washington reports that in the Middle Ages, Jews living in Spain who observed Kosher laws went so far as to make duck and goose "hams." Today, home chefs can apply confit methods to pork in classic and innovative dishes. 

So, why not experiment with the slow-cooking confit techniques by rending pork in duck fat? That's just what restauranteur Thomas Chen has done at Tuome in New York City: a crisp-skinned pork confit made from shoulder meat that is cured and then cooked for 15 hours in duck fat. You can also confit pork in its own delicious juices. As New City points out, classic Mexican pork carnitas is pretty much pork confit since the meat is simmered in its own fat for hours. 

It may be easy to think about confit as a technique fit mostly for fine dining restaurants and easier still to think of something like confit egg yolks as exotic. But, there is no reason you cannot play with something like that in your own kitchen. After all, what's wrong with a little fine dining at home, especially when it is surprisingly easy? 

Egg yolks poached in olive oil really are delicious (and the same thing as confit cooking). Beyond that, they might be even easier to make than conventional eggs poached in water. To separate, you can crack the eggs over your upraised palm, let the whites run through your fingers, and add only the yolks to the poaching oil.

All you need to confit egg yolks is a heat source, a thermometer, a saucepan, eggs, and olive oil. Remember to carefully drop the yolks into the pan, and make sure they are fully submerged. Try popping one on top of a pasta dish, or toast a bagel, cover it with smoked salmon, and top the salmon with a confit egg yolk.

Onion confit (aka onion jam) is thin, half-moon slices of onion simmered slowly in fat with salt, pepper, sugar, and, sometimes, wine or vinegar. The cooked onions begin to turn golden, lose their texture, and approach the consistency of a jam. You can make onion confit with white, yellow, or red onions. The difference is less one of flavor than it is aesthetic.

While onion confit has its feet planted in the savory world, the secret to its versatility as an ingredient lies in the inherent sweetness of the onion itself. You can add onion confit to a burger. You can use it to top crostini. You can use your onion confit as a garnish on roasted meats, add it to sandwiches, or as a starring element of a charcuterie board.

Close relatives of the onion, like shallots, and leeks also benefit from being transformed by simmering oil. Just 1½ hours in the oven in olive oil yields a shallot confit recipe that can be used in nearly innumerable ways, including the incredibly flavorful shallot oil! Chef Dominique Crenn confits leeks in a vinaigrette in as little as half an hour. Wild leeks (aka ramps confit) make an excellent garnish.

While confit works well with many vegetables, there is one set of relatively humble options that are truly elevated by a long, slow simmer in fat: mushrooms. It's not that mushrooms are not tasty in their raw state, but rather that the confit treatment enhances their umami properties. While you could confit mushrooms in any fat, there may be no better choice than butter. Mushrooms love butter because it brings out their richness, is appropriate for vegetarians, and helps create caramelization. For many of the same reasons butter works for sautéed mushrooms, it works brilliantly for mushroom confit.

But, while it is almost a cliché that French cuisine loves its butter, the reality is that when you go to the south of France it is olive oil that's king, as Boots for Breakfast points out. That's also true for a mushroom confit made with olive oil.

Perhaps one of the least obvious classes of vegetables to gain the confit technique is root vegetables. The secret is using plenty of oil. Indeed, you should probably err on the side of using more rather than less or even an excessive amount of oil rather than just enough. Doing otherwise is likely to simply be a mistake.

Much like the movie "Ratatouille" may have put eggplant confit on the map, so "The Menu" might do the same for potato confit. That preparation features in one of the movie's signature dishes: The Mess. While the dish may not be one you can actually order on any menu, Andrew Zimmern offers a spiral cord dish that certainly seems to invoke the scene of culinary horror. And potato confit is hardly the only root vegetable confit out there. We are particular fans of beet confit.

The thing that makes root vegetables such counterintuitively good candidates for the confit treatment is the very starchy quality that might make them seem unlikely prospects. Take, for example, parsnip confit. Sure, who would think something so seemingly puritan and hard would become as luscious as a confit? But, it is precisely the starch that allows you to make a silky purée after taking a warm bath in oil! Much the same works with carrot confit.