Chef John's Cassoulet Recipe

I recently had this dish at a French restaurant in Napa Valley. I was so impressed that I found Chef John's recipe and made it over Easter when it was cold and rainy. Yes, it is time-consuming and yes, it takes numerous pots and pans, but I categorize that as a labor of love. It was well worth the effort and absolutely delicious. If you follow the instructions, you will not go wrong.

After having a poultry meal, such as baked chicken, turkey (thanksgiving etc), or a bucket of fried chicken, this can be the next day's meal. Remember, this is economy food of normal people in Iberia/western Mediterranean. While cleaning up dinner from your poultry meal, deglaze the pans with water into a large stock pot, add all the bones, gristle, skin, etc. from your poultry dinner plus any wings that didn't get eaten or a drumstick or two. Add a $2 packet of dry white beans and simmer very low overnight. In the morning when beans are tender, turn off heat and eventually transfer to cool in fridge (in winter, back porch, garage, etc). The fat that comes to the surface is what you will fry with and mix with the crumbs. Take out the gristle, skin & bones from the beans. The meat will be very tender and that's what you can use as the shredded confit. Don't leave any bones in, no one likes to have to worry about bones. You can give the skin and gristle to your pets but not the bones (cooked bones can pierce their organs, death or emergency surgery). Don't put wine in anything you want to give your dog a taste of, anything grape is poisonous to dogs due to tartaric acid. It's also a waste of the alcohol, you can have the wine with dinner rather than in the dish. Since this dish calls for fresh pork, cured pork/ham, dark meat poultry, and sausage, the way to do it is when you make pork chops or a pork roast, save a little in the freezer for this. Same with sausage, freeze one or two when you make them. Until finally it's the day you made chicken or turkey that day and it's time to make stock overnight with your beans. For the pancetta, you can get tiny diced ham in any grocery store in America for around $2 a pack and that can be frozen. Or you can get a single ham steak for a reasonable price, dice and fry some of it in its own rendered fat, the stock fat, or bacon fat you have saved. Save your ham bones and pork bones in freezer too, they can all be used to make stock. As someone mentioned here, it can make without every meat mentioned and with half of less of the meats. Do not cook anything with tomato or wine in cast iron, you can get iron poisoning.

This was wonderful! Served for a French wine tasting dinner. Expensive and time consuming, but so worth it! Wish I could have found more authentic sausages, but found Aidell's garlic and gruyere, which seemed fine. Great company dinner, as it is hands off towards the end. I added a bit of garlic to the duck fat/cracklings to add to the bread crumb mixture. After simmering the bacon in the stock, I removed it and did not add to the dish, as all flavor had been cooked out. Had extra duck stock and pork stock from the freezer to add to the bean cooking liquid. Can't go wrong with extra flavor. Not too salty at all.

This was my first time making cassoulet and I was very nervous. The ingredients are expensive and the process is time consuming. That being said, it was worth it! I doubled the recipe and served it to 12 friends (who don’t mind being my test subjects for new recipes) and it was a huge hit. I made the recipe pretty much as it was written. I did borrow a few ideas from a recipe provided by Dartagnan, I made the confit of duck legs per a recipe from Dartagnan. They were fantastic, plus the process provided me with an abundance of duck fat to be saved and used for other purposes. I used Tarbais beans (which were so creamy and delicious). When I cooked the beans, in addition to the seasonings, pork butt and pancetta I added the duck leg bones. Grab every little bit of flavor where you can, right. That recipe had me put the pork butt and pancetta in with the beans. The meat was distributed well throughout the dish. The dinner was on a Friday evening so I started the recipe early (Sunday for the duck legs, Tuesday for the beans and ragu, Wednesday to construct the cassoulet). I do think the additional time to let the flavors meld was a positive with the flavor of the dish. In addition, it gave me a good opportunity to skim off any fat that collected on the top of the dish. The crumb topping was great. I did use the duck skin to make “duck bacon bits” created by crisping it. OMG – what a pop of flavor. I think the recipe is absolutely great as is. I will make it

Wow. What an ambitious recipe! Couldn't find duck confit, so I substituted sautéed chicken thighs, but I also used Rancho Gordo cassoulet beans, which I believe really helped make up the ingredient quality differential. This dish is truly a labor of love, but it's worth it because all your care is returned once it's done. This is something I'll add to my forever repertoire for sure—it's the perfect way to warm up after a chilly day.

Rock star recipe and yes i used every pan in the kitchen. The local butcher/sausage maker provided the sausage on request. It makes a huge difference. Make the stock in advance, it will save you time and it's always good to have a good stock in the pantry.

This is a complex recipe and I learned a lot! I used flageolet beans which are smaller than Tarbais, so I kept an eye on them and reduced cooking time. Substituted browned boneless chicken thigh chunks for duck confit (sadly), but used the bones from chicken and pork chop in the cooking broth. The crumb topping is amazing, but baking the cassoulet uncovered left mine a bit on the dry side despite ladling in more liquid at the halfway point. (I did halve the recipe so mine wasn't as deep). Next time I might cover for the first half of baking, then uncover to finish because the carmelization of the crust is just sensational. Thank you again, Chef John!

We went to the south of France this summer and when we tried the cassoulet I knew I had to make it at home. I'm so glad I tried chef John's version because it was AMAZING. The only substitution I had to use was turkey legs in place of the duck confit as I could not find duck legs anywhere. I made the turkey confit using duck fat and it turned out really well so if you can't find duck try the turkey. Be sure to follow the steps closely and monitor the salt levels as you go. This took me a long time to make the first time but I anticipate a shorter prep time next time since I won't have to read the recipe and steps so many times! Make this if you're up for a challenge! Bon appétit!

Made as described and it was amazing! Great flavours and a very hearty cold weather meal! Will definitely make this again.

It sounds delicious but 21 ingredients and 11 steps - OMG! My hat's off to those intrepid cooks who took this on! Next time you make this, please invite me to dinner.

Sounds/looks wonderful but too much to tackle for an old guy like me. I save all of Chef John’s recipes but this one is out of my pay grade………2 duck leg confit, bones……seriously?

Posted a pic on Instagram — everyone asked for the recipe!

The real deal! My French Canadian father was famous for this dish which was a regular in our house. We just used regular Ham Hock, Great Northern Beans.

Absolutely delicious! As he says, it’s a lot of work, but also a lot of fun to make. Truly a great cooking project and well worth the effort - I will certainly make it again. Thanks Chef John!

This is perfect! Don't change a thing! I've made this many times before I knew about Chef John, but this is the best and the simplest, well, sort of.

It took a couple of attempts to dial this in. I made the duck confit as a separate event and had it in the freezer so that helped but it was still a lot of steps but worth it.

Wow! Incredible flavor.