Since confit is cooked entirely in fat—usually animal fat—people wonder if confit cooking is healthy. It’s definitely delicious but I wanted to do a little research to answer this question and put it to rest. But confit isn’t just a cooking method; it’s also the final product itself and a preservation method, so I’m going deeper than this question. In this article, I also define confit and cover the pros, cons and alternatives for confit cooking and confit preservation. Let’s get to it!
Is confit a healthy way of cooking? It depends.
Confit is a way to cook meat (usually poultry) in fat (usually animal fat) at low temperatures. The final product is tender and not much fattier than meat cooked by other methods (after you remove excess fat). Whether this is healthy depends on which dietary ideology you follow. For example, MyPlate (the USDA food guide), the Canada Food Guide, the WHO food guidelines and The Eatwell Guide (Britain) would caution against too much confit as these organizations all recommend limiting saturated fat. On the other hand, ways of eating that focus on nutrient-dense whole foods—such as clean keto, paleo, primal and carnivore/Zero Carb—do not limit (and indeed encourage) the consumption of saturated fat from animal sources.
So, is confit healthy? You’ll have to decide for yourself since these different schools of thought exist, and I’m sure you’ll figure out what’s right for you and your family. But in the meantime, let’s learn more about confit!
[By the way, I look at 16 different dietary ideologies and their positions on eating animal fats in my article, Is Forcemeat Healthy? 16 Answers According to Popular Diets. This article also includes a list of low carb resources for anyone who wants to explore this way of eating and get more information on whether animal products are part of a healthy diet.]
What is confit?
In Garde Manger: The Art and Craft of the Cold Kitchen, Fourth Edition, The Culinary Institute of America defines confit as, “Preserved meat (usually goose, duck, or pork) cooked and preserved in its own fat.”
In their book, Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking & Curing, Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn provide a bigger context. They say, “The literal translation of the word confit is “preserved.” When the word is applied to a type of meat, it means poached in fat and, strictly speaking, stored within that fat until it’s ready to use. Because it was originally a preservative technique, confit falls within the charcuterie rubric, and it is perhaps the most accessible and easy charcuterie technique for the home cook. It is also the most delicious and the most versatile. Once again, we no longer need this method to save our food from going bad, but we use it because it tastes exquisite.”
Is confit fatty to eat?
Many foodies suggest not eating confit as soon as you make it. This means you need to store it, and if you do it the traditional way, it means the confit meat is covered in fat and refrigerated (though the refrigeration part is modern).
About the resting part, Anne Willan, in her 1981 book, French Regional Cooking, says, “Confit should be left at least a week to mature before being eaten. It has a flavour all its own, though it can be compared to ham.”
After the confit has rested, you must wrestle your pieces of meat out of the preservation jar, which can be difficult if the fat is still cold. (One way to mitigate this is by letting the jar warm up a little.) As you pry out your piece of confit, you’ll have extra fat attached to it. You can scrape the excess fat off, so it goes back into the storage container. Or also scrape it off to use at dinner, for example to enhance the flavour of sautéed veggies.
When you warm the confit, more excess fat drips off the meat and into the pan. This means by the time it gets to your plate, it’s about as fatty as you would expect that type of meat to be. The fat you cook the confit in doesn’t penetrate the meat to give it a greasy feel.
Okay, now let’s get into the pros, cons of confit cooking and some alternatives.
Confit cooking: the pros
Confit can be made with a variety of meats and fats
When you think of confit, you probably think of birds—duck and goose, in particular. They are great for making confit because of their natural fattiness, but you can use many types of meat to make confit. This includes duck, goose, turkey, chicken, pork, rabbit, salmon, bacon, lamb and beef. During my research, I found mention of confit of bacon, salmon, lamb and beef but not too many recipes so these meats might be thought of as more confit theory than practice.
In his book, The River Cottage Meat Book, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says, “In theory, most kinds of meat could be made into a confit, but the technique achieves the greatest success when applied to ducks and geese. This is because they carry so much fat that no extra is required for the cooking or covering of the meat.”
If you’re not making duck or goose confit, you’ll probably need extra fat to cover the meat during cooking. You can use duck fat, goose fat, bacon fat, lard and schmaltz (chicken fat). You can even re-use strained fat from old batches of confit, though Anne Willan (mentioned earlier) warns that “after three or four cycles, it becomes too salty.”
If you look for confit recipes on the internet, you’ll find ones that call for olive oil or even (gasp!) vegetable oil as the cooking fat. I don’t recommend this as it’s not the traditional method and if you eat meat, you might as well use meat fat too. Plus, vegetable oils, especially industrial seed oils like canola, soy and cottonseed oil, are high in Omega-6 fats (the wrong kind).
[If you want to know more about why vegetable oil is not fit for human consumption, watch this 10-minute video called Why You Should Avoid Vegetable Oils with Nina Teicholz, an investigative science journalist and Mark Hyman, MD.]
Confit is easy to make
Confit is great because it sounds fancy (so French!) but is super easy to make. Add some salt and seasoning to some meat, marinate it for a day or more, rinse it off, melt some fat, pour it over the meat, cook on low for a few hours, store the meat in jars/containers and cover with fat.
There’s not one complicated or confusing step in the whole process. If you’ve read any of my other articles, you’ll know I lean towards simplicity in the kitchen and that’s what I appreciate about confit.
Confit can be cooked on the stove or in the oven
You’ve got options for cooking confit and both are easy. You can simmer the confit on the stove or in the oven. I find it’s easier to keep a steady temperature in the pot when the pot is in the oven versus on the stove. You’d have to pay more attention to the cooking confit when it’s on the stove so I recommend using the oven so you can read a book/relax while the oven does all the hard work.
Confit has many uses in the kitchen
You can do a lot when you have a couple of jars of confit in the fridge. Like on those days when you forget to thaw out some meat—and now it’s too late—confit gets you out of that jam. You can take out some pieces of confit and warm them up in only a few minutes while you prep the rest of your dinner. If you’re working with duck, goose or chicken legs, crisp up the skin for a minute under the broiler for a lovely texture.
If you have guests drop by unexpectedly, you can grab a few confit duck or chicken legs, debone them and shred the meat for a quick rillettes spread to go with crusty bread, crackers or crudité, depending on your way of eating. Add some gherkins, a dollop of jam, a side of Dijon mustard and some apple slices, boom, it’s pretty much a ploughman’s lunch.
You can shred confit to add protein to a salad. Or add the confit to your next cassoulet, which is a “rich combination of beans baked with meats,” according to Julia Child in her legendary book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The 40th Anniversary Edition. Or add it to sautéed vegetables or a soup.
Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn (mentioned earlier) also suggest shredding the confit and rolling it into a crepe or using it to stuff ravioli. What a versatile dish!
Then there’s the fat. Many references to cooking confit also reference using the confit fat to fry up potatoes. I use it to fry up veggies for my husband. You can use this fat in many of the same situations that call for butter or oil.
The confit process also gives you confit jelly
By the time your confit is done, you’ll have three different elements: the meat, the fat and a rich, salty broth which will turn into confit jelly when cooled. This confit jelly is like having a jar of flavour at your disposal, with none of the questionable ingredients that come in stock cubes. You can melt a little to pour over the confit meat and add it to sauces for a flavour boost.
Confit cooking: the cons
Just like anything, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns with confit cooking. Now let’s look at the dark side of confit, ha ha.
Confit can end up too salty
As mentioned earlier, the meat is marinated with salt and seasonings before cooking. Depending on your recipe, this marinating time can be from six hours to three days. Some recipes call for wiping off excess salt or rinsing the meat before cooking. At the end of the process is the storage time where, as we saw earlier, flavours gel together. Also, if you use leftover bacon grease (basically flavoured lard) as the extra fat in your confit recipe, that adds more salt than plain lard would.
These three elements can leave your confit too salty for your tastes. If you don’t eat much salt—or are sensitive to food being too salty—try marinating for one day instead of two or three. And use plain lard instead of bacon grease for the extra fat.
If your confit does end up too salty, you’ll need to eat it in smaller doses, rather than a leg at a time. Many of the ideas in the section about confit’s many uses will turn a too salty confit into something delightful. I know this by experience as I’ve committed the crime of too-salty confit!
Confit requires a trip to the butcher or specialty shop if you don’t have a stockpile of lard
If you’re new to confit or the world of high-fat, animal-based nutrition, you probably don’t have a stockpile of animal fat in your fridge. [Sidebar: If you eat bacon, start cooking it on a cookie sheet, preferably a stoneware one, in the oven and pour that bacon grease into a mason jar when it’s done. Your collection of grease will increase, I guarantee it!]
To get around that, you can make your confit with fatty duck or goose, which shouldn’t require additional fat. But then again, it might be hard to find duck and especially goose.
You can buy lard at the grocery store, but it may have some ingredients you don’t want. For example, as I write this, a No Name pure lard product contains lard, BHA, BHT and citric acid.
[According to Scientific American’s article, BHA and BHT: A Case for Fresh?, “BHA or butylated hydroxyanisole is a synthetic antioxidant that is used to prevent fats in foods from going rancid and as a defoaming agent for yeast. BHT or butylated hydroxytoluene also stabilizes fats and is used to retain food smell, color and flavor. It too appeared on the synthetic chemical scene in the late 1940s and was used as a food additive beginning in 1954.”]
Though the American Food and Drug Administration labels BHA and BHT as GRAS (generally recognized as safe), I stay away from foods that contain these items and you may want to do that too.
If that’s the case, you may have to make a special trip to your butcher shop for preservative-free lard, schmaltz, duck fat, etc. However, you can also buy these specialty fats on Amazon and in fancier grocery stores (for a Canadian grocery chain example, probably not at No Frills but yes at Loblaws).
Confit cooking: the alternatives
In this section, I’m talking about alternatives to confit cooking that are still like confit cooking. Not mentioning alternatives as in, every other cooking style which isn’t confit. It wouldn’t be helpful if I say, “Hey, did you know that if you don’t want to cook confit style, you could barbecue or poach or roast, etc.?” Right? Right!
Sous-vide confit
The first alternate method for confit cooking is sous-vide confit cooking. With this, you season your meat, put one chunk of the meat (for example, one duck leg) and some fat into the sous-vide bag, seal it, let it marinate overnight and then cook the baggie in a water bath on low for eight or more hours.
This way, you use less fat and more plastic or silicone. I don’t cook my food in plastic but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t if you want to! I’m also skeptical about cooking food in silicone though it appears to be an inert material. However, I do embrace silicone for oven mitts, spatulas and the “cozy” for the handle of my cast-iron frying pan.
Steamed faux confit
Another alternative for confit cooking is faux confit cooking. According to the New York Times article, After Microsoft, Bringing a High-Tech Eye to Professional Kitchens, Dr. Nathan Myhrvold, said, “Double-blind taste tests proved that the same tasty results [as confit] could be achieved by steaming and then rubbing some of the fat on the outside.”
And in a Toronto Life article, Q&A with Nathan Myhrvold, the author of Modernist Cuisine, 2011’s most talked about cookbook, Nathan says, “We did a taste test where we cooked the duck three ways: traditionally, sous-vide and steamed. As long as the time and temperature are the same, in a blind taste test, we couldn’t tell the difference. When I tell some chefs this, they almost get angry and don’t agree with it.”
Nick Kindelsperger at The Paupered Chef site, shows you how to accomplish the steamed version in his recipe, Faux Confit: Steamed Duck Legs.
If your household isn’t blessed with copious amounts of lard, you might want to try one or both of these alternate confit methods.
And now let’s get into the pros, cons and alternatives when it comes to the preservation side of confit.
Confit preservation: the pros
Confit is a preservation method that’s been successful since the olden days of no fridges!
This preservation method’s got history and that history is French. In their book, Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie, Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman say, “Gascony … is the spiritual home of … confit. In Gascony, confit was more than a great way to prepare goose and duck—it meant survival. Before refrigeration, families would put up enough confit to last throught the winter … they wouldn’t eat this confit during the upcoming winter … They would eat the confit from the previous year only once they’d put up a new batch, to ensure that they had enough food for this year and the next.”
In Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book, The River Cottage Meat Book, he agrees with this, even in our modern times, “With this protective covering [of fat], and in a sealed jar, a confit can keep for months or even a year or two without refrigeration.”
Of course, if you have a fridge, it makes a good home for your confit too.
Confit is a project that lets you use the jars of bacon fat in your fridge
If you take a moderate or generous approach to bacon eating—and you pour off the cooking grease—you’ll develop a stockpile in your fridge. Plus, the general bacon grease container on the counter. On the one hand, you might think, “If times get hard, I’ve got tens of thousands of calories of lard in the fridge so that’s good.” But then again, you might become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of your bacon grease collection.
So, confit is a good place to use this bacon blubber. Some recipes call for a whole litre of extra grease! Now, technically speaking, you won’t get rid of that whole litre. It’ll go into the confit and when the meat is done, you’ll have leftover confit grease, but less. Then you might use that a couple more times before it hits the green bin.
So, this might be like bacon fat storage musical chairs but, even so, I think you’ll be pleased with your confit project—because now that extra grease is preserving your meat, instead of doing nothing.
[Soapy sidebar: You can also use that too-salty confit fat to make soap, though you’ll have to “wash” it first to get the salt out (because it might interfere with the soap recipe). For how to wash your bacon grease, read the article by the Sustainable Scientist called, Making Bacon Soap. If you want to make soap out of your other bacon grease stockpile, check out the Mother Earth News article, Render Fat to Make Handmade Soap and SoapCalc, a soap making calculator. I’ve made one batch with 90% bacon grease, 10% coconut oil and another batch with 100% bacon grease. The jury’s still out about which one is better as we just started using the 100% batch. Each batch was a fun project that gave me 20+ bars of ugly soap for about $5 worth of lye (and that’s based on buying the small, expensive bottle).]
Confit can be done on a small or large scale
Confit making is easily scaleable. You can test it out with a couple of duck or chicken legs, especially if you use the sous-vide method. Or you can make dozens of pieces of confit meat at a time; the only limit is your cooking equipment and space. Confit is loved by restaurant chefs because they can make huge batches ahead of time and then quickly prepare what seems like a gourmet meal. Plus, there’s no waste issue. Unused confit keeps, as we know.
Confit preservation: the cons
It can be tricky to use a small amount of confit from a large storage container
I haven’t yet got the hang of removing a chicken leg from the storage container without tearing it up. To avoid this fate, you can gently warm up the entire storage jar to make confit removal easier. You can also put the jar beside the stove (if it’s warm) to melt just enough of the fat to make it easier to get what you need.
This problem is reduced if you use smaller storage jars.
Jane Grigson, in her 1967 book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, says, “Although one can in theory use large jars, and remove the preserved meat over a period of time at intervals, I have never pushed this too far. I use lidded stoneware storage jars of the kind sold widely in household bazaars in France, of a size to hold about six or seven pieces of meat, or even less.”
So, you might have a few larger containers or more smaller containers of confit which leads us to…
Confit takes up space in your fridge
In my house, we focus on eating whole foods, many from the animal kingdom, which means we use the freezer the most, the fridge comes in second and our cupboards have hardly any food at all (except my stockpile of mustard and hot sauce). Looking at our fridge, you might think we were starving to death. All that to say, there’s always room for jars of bacon grease and confit in our fridge.
However, I know from visiting other people’s homes that some folks keep their fridge jam packed. If this is your style, cooking confit might not fit in because—where will you put it?!? However, you can always start small with six or eight chicken legs, which you can probably squish into two one-litre mason jars—and that doesn’t take up too much space.
Confit preservation: the alternatives
I haven’t come across any confit preservation alternatives that are “like” confit. Confit is perfectly edible right out of the storage pot. Perhaps pickled meats (pickled herring comes to mind is the closest you can get to confit.
You can’t eat salted, dehydrated or freeze-dried meat right out of the storage pot like confit, so they don’t fit the bill as proper alternatives. Plus, would dehydrated or freeze-dried meat reconstitute into anything nearly as glorious as actual confit? I’m skeptical.
Conclusion
So there you have it! Now you know if confit is healthy and all the pros, cons and alternatives surrounding confit cooking and preservation. If you’ve decided that confit is right for you, you might also enjoy reading my beginner’s guide to confit which is in my article, Confit: Preserving Yummy Meats the French Way.
