Confiting Meat is very popular french way of preserving. The meat is salted, then cooked and then fully covered in Rendered fat, it was used very much for duck and goose ( I think in part because both of these birds have enough fat to render off to be able to do this). Confit is stored in sterilized jars that are completely covered with fat to seal them from air. The cured meat typically takes several days to weeks to mellow and needs to be stored in a cool, dry place..
To extract the peices of meat from the fat, put the jar in a saucepan of hot water, the fat melts and the meat can then be taken out.. After you take out the meat out, leave the fat to solidfy over the remaining peices and then continue to store it, MUST be totally covered with fat to work.
The books all seem to agree that confit meat will keep three to four months, this is a form for keeping meat over the winter, which works well with the cellar temps, if you are going to use Confit in our heated summers, you would need to store it in the fridge.
Confiting duck and goose was considered a peasant way of doing things, but now its become quite fashionable and is used in many ways over the classes. (again this makes sense, the rich would have been able to afford a fresh bird) where the peasant would have needed a way to butcher in the fall and hold the meat over the winter for use.
So you typically do legs (but you can do other parts, and they need to be salted for at least 24 hours but I have gone as long as 2 or 3 days with no issues, I have also done duck breasts and cured them like ham before doing this. You will need to take every single scrape of fat on the bird you can get, rendered out of the skin, and all the internal fat, and render it down, strain and allow to cool..
Make sure your jars are freshly boiled, placed your hot, long cooked tender meat into the jars, pour your warm but (not hot/boiling fat) and allow to cool, and then store..
When you take it out the meat out, it will crisp in either a cast iron pan or in the oven.
now I said I would also talk about pork, I used the extra pork trims from a very good quality belly, and after curing it for bacon, I took the extra peices and confited them with clean rendered pork fat.. I loved it, it was awesome, followed the same as above..Ā I do find they take longer to crisp
Note: I will cover the tops of the jars with cheese cloth to keep anything from getting in, while they cool down before adding the lids , as you don’t want or need them to seal, you can not wanting to open kettle can them, which is what will happen if you use to hot of fat, put the lids on to fast and it will also slow down the cooling time as the closed lids will help retain the heat longer.
Just another Day on the Farm 