Chicken Leg Confit
A few months ago, Melissa and I subscribed to the Soul Food Farms CSA, giving ourselves a regular injection of excellent chickens and eggs. When we signed up, Bonnie, Ethicurean extraordinaire and the CSA organizer, mentioned that Eric Koefoed, the husband half of the Soul Food duo, would be making chicken leg confit at some point in the future.
I didn't feel like waiting.
When we got our second chicken, I broke it down and seasoned the legs with kosher salt ground in the food processor with a 2:2:1 mix of tarragon, thyme, and parsley. I spread the green powder onto a plate, pressed the chicken legs down into it, put them in a container flesh side down, and sprinkled the rest of the cure over the skin. After leaving the legs in the refrigerator for 24 hours, I cooked them for about an hour — until the meat was fork-tender — in a 190° mix of olive oil, butter, and duck fat. (A good sign that your legs are done is that the skin pulls away from the joint where the foot would be, but that's also a bit beyond the ideal.) Then I left the chicken legs buried in the cooking fat for a week in the refrigerator.
When we finally ate the legs, I reheated them in an oven, adjusting the heat and the rack height until the skin became crunchy.
It was one of the best dishes I've ever made. The leg meat was fall-apart tender. The skin had a delicate crunch. The cure had added an herb character to each bite. The salt had worked its way through the meat, seasoning it evenly and enhancing the flavor of the high-quality chickens. I made it a favorite in Mise En Place.
I don't have a recipe for it yet; maybe with the next batch I'll start taking notes. But if you've got access to really good chickens and you know the basics of confiting meat, you can probably figure it out. I like to serve it with rice and steamed carrots. You can serve it with a weighty white wine or a light-bodied red wine, as long as the wine has a high acidity; I love it with Mondeuse from the Bugey region of France.
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