Cassoulet!

Last week, our family made our first cooking video, about cassolet to commemorate my first time making the dish in my new cassole!

I miss the food culture in Texas, but I also love the food culture in France. It highlights regional ingredients and timeless recipes.

In our area, Cassoulet is a star. It’s made from local lingot beans, saucisse de Toulouse, and duck confit.

I’ve made this dish for visitors many times in my everyday pans. But this Christmas, Olivier gave me a traditional earthenware cassole. The dish is what the recipe was named for, and mine was handmade nearby by a family of local artisans.

Cooking in the "official" dish for the first time made the whole experience so much more special, so I recorded it. Shoutout to Marc for the edit and Rémi for the bilingual voiceover!

Ingredients for 8 people:

• 8 small pieces of duck confit, about 800g* 

• About 2.5 L homemade chicken or duck stock

• 500g white beans (we used lingots from Castelnaudary)

• 500g saucisse de Toulouse - links or or a coil

• 200g bacon lardons

• 2 carrots

• 1 onion

• 4 cloves garlic

• 2 bay leaves

• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme

*We used 8 “manchons”- the meaty part of the wings, but you could also use 4 legs and separate the leg and thigh for 8 pieces).  In the photo, the package of duck confit was twice as much as I needed, so I froze the other 8 pieces for my next cassoulet.  There is usually plenty of duck fat packed with the meat that you will use to brown the meat, no need to buy extra!

Have you tried cassoulet? Do you want to try cassoulet? Are there any other French recipes you want to see us try?