This Ina Garten Cassoulet recipe is easy, quick, and made with duck or chicken legs, breadcrumbs, olive oil, fresh thyme leaves, and clarified butter and takes around 4 hours and 30 minutes to cook to perfection. Serve your Cassoulet with roasted duck fat potatoes, sautéed spinach, braised red cabbage, arugula salad, and lemony celery crunch salad for a well-rounded meal.
To make this Cassoulet, Ina starts by preheating the oven and preparing a breadcrumb mixture with duck or chicken skin. She then sears the meats, sautés the veggies, and combines everything in a roasting pan. After baking for about 3 hours, she thickens the liquid and broils the dish with the breadcrumb topping.
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Ina Garten Cassoulet Ingredients
4 duck or chicken legs, cut into two pieces
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 cup + 1/8 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, chopped
2 tablespoons clarified butter
3 pounds boneless lamb leg or pork shoulder
1 pound Polish or bratwurst sausage
1 1/2 cups large dice Spanish onions
1 1/2 cups large dice carrots
1 1/2 cups large dice celery
4 fresh tomatoes, large dice
1 cup dry white wine
5 cups water or chicken bouillon
1 pound navy beans, soaked overnight
1/4 cup fresh marjoram leaves, chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
6 bay leaves
Salt and ground black pepper
How To Make Ina Garten Cassoulet
Preparation: Preheat your oven to 375°F. Trim excess skin from duck or chicken and dry it in the oven for about 15 minutes. Blend the dried skin with breadcrumbs, olive oil, and 1/8 teaspoon thyme leaves. Set aside.
Searing the Meat: Heat clarified butter in a heavy-bottomed pan. Sear duck, lamb, and sausage until browned. Transfer them to a large roasting pan.
Cooking Veggies: In the same pan, sauté onions, carrots, and celery until browned. Add tomatoes, wine, and water. Bring to a boil.
Combine and Bake: Drain soaked navy beans and add them to the pan with herbs. Pour this mixture over the meats in the roasting pan. Cover and bake for about 3 hours, or until meat is tender.
Final Touch: Remove meat, and drain liquid from beans and veggies. Blend some of the mixture to thicken the liquid. Adjust seasoning. Lay sliced meat on beans, sprinkle breadcrumb mixture, and broil until the top is lightly browned.
What To Serve With Cassoulet
For a well-rounded meal, consider pairing your cassoulet with side dishes like roasted duck fat potatoes, sautéed spinach, or braised red cabbage. Lighter options could include a celery salad or an arugula salad. If you’re looking for something unique, try serving the cassoulet over a cauliflower steak.
How To Store Cassoulet
In The Fridge:
Store the cassoulet in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3-4 days. Make sure it has cooled down to room temperature before sealing it to maintain the best quality.
You can freeze cassoulet for up to 2-3 months. Place it in a freezer-safe container, leaving some space for expansion. Thaw it in the fridge before reheating.
How To Reheat Cassoulet
To reheat the cassoulet, place it in a preheated oven at 350°F for about 20-25 minutes, or until it’s heated through. You can also reheat it on the stovetop over low heat, stirring occasionally to ensure even warming.
This Ina Garten Cassoulet recipe is easy, quick, and made with duck or chicken legs, breadcrumbs, olive oil, fresh thyme leaves, and clarified butter and takes around 4 hours and 30 minutes to cook to perfection. Serve your Cassoulet with roasted duck fat potatoes, sautéed spinach, braised red cabbage, arugula salad, and lemony celery crunch salad for a well-rounded meal.
Ina Garten Cassoulet Ingredients
How To Make Ina Garten Cassoulet
Preparation: Preheat your oven to 375°F. Trim excess skin from duck or chicken and dry it in the oven for about 15 minutes. Blend the dried skin with breadcrumbs, olive oil, and 1/8 teaspoon thyme leaves. Set aside.
Searing the Meat: Heat clarified butter in a heavy-bottomed pan. Sear duck, lamb, and sausage until browned. Transfer them to a large roasting pan.
Cooking Veggies: In the same pan, sauté onions, carrots, and celery until browned. Add tomatoes, wine, and water. Bring to a boil.
Combine and Bake: Drain soaked navy beans and add them to the pan with herbs. Pour this mixture over the meats in the roasting pan. Cover and bake for about 3 hours, or until meat is tender.
Final Touch: Remove meat, and drain liquid from beans and veggies. Blend some of the mixture to thicken the liquid. Adjust seasoning. Lay sliced meat on beans, sprinkle breadcrumb mixture, and broil until the top is lightly browned.
Because cassoulet is meant to be rich and substantial, it pairs beautifully with a salad of dark greens and a citrusy (or mustardy) vinaigrette to add some acidity to the meal. Also, don't forget to serve your cassoulet with plenty of crusty baguette pieces for dipping!
Cassoulet is traditionally made with dried white beans like flageolet or regional specialty beans like these ones from Tarbais. It might be a stretch to locate these beans in your local market, but great northern beans, navy beans, or cannellini beans are all great alternatives.
Saucisse de Toulouse - The Best Sausage. Toulouse Saucisse (Toulouse Sausage) is a fresh sausage made in Toulouse, France, in the southwest. It's a classic French pork sausage cooked with white wine and onions. Cassoulet is a fantastic way to use it.
Cassoulet, a hearty slow-simmered stew of sausage, confit (typically duck), pork, and white beans, is one of the great hallmarks of French country cuisine. The best versions are cooked for hours until the beans and meat meld into a dish of luxuriant, velvety richness.
Red wines are often considered the best pairing for cassoulet. The hearty and rich flavours of the dish can be balanced with the tannins and fruitiness of the wine, and the acidity can also help to cut through the richness of the dish, providing a well-balanced and satisfying pairing.
The cassoulet needs to bake uncovered to develop a crisp crust. Baking sheets All of the ingredients for a cassoulet are cooked before being combined and baked again. The meat can be cooked in any number of ways; here, the pork and lamb stew meat is roasted on rimmed baking sheets so that it browns.
Nestle sausage into cassoulet and bake, uncovered, 30 minutes more. Let stand 10 minutes. Gently stir beans, mashing some with back of spoon, to thicken broth before serving.
True andouillettes are rarely seen outside France and have a strong, distinctive odour coming from the colon. Although sometimes repellent to the uninitiated, the scent is prized by its devotees. When made with the small intestine, they are a plump sausage generally about 25 mm (1 in) in diameter.
In South West France, cassoulet is more than king: it's God Himself. That's according to the celebrated belle epoque chef Prosper Montagné, anyway — and almost a century after he said it, no one's arguing. This humble bean stew is as much part of the cultural identity of the Occitanie region as rugby and red wine.
Convention has it that the cassoulet of Castelnaudary is based largely on pork and pork rind, sausage, and (sometimes) goose; the Carcassonne variety contains leg of mutton and (occasionally) partridge; and the cassoulet of Toulouse includes fresh lard, mutton, local Toulouse sausage, and duck or goose.
You can serve cassoulet on its own with a salad and bread on the side, but it's traditional to accompany it with something colorful . . . usually greens of some sort.
The first cassoulet is claimed by the city of Castelnaudary, which was under siege by the British during the Hundred Years War. The beleaguered townspeople gathered up the ingredients they could find and made a large stew to nourish and bolster their defenders.
A cassoulet, of course, is something else entirely, and usually refers to that long-simmering stew from southwest France of duck, lamb or pork, and white beans. Confused? Maybe it will help if you roll up your sleeves and bake this cassolette recipe—a luscious gratin of chicken and noodles rife with French flavors.
Introduction: My name is Corie Satterfield, I am a fancy, perfect, spotless, quaint, fantastic, funny, lucky person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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