Cassoulet is one of my favorites dishes that I've tried in France. I had it for the first time a few months ago when we visited the city of Carcassonne and I basically fell in love with it. It's a traditional white bean and meat stew thats cooked and served in a tapered clay or ceramic vessel known as a casserole.
It's typically made with duck confites or mutton, depending on the area of France, as well as duck or pork sausage and other meats. Both times that I had it at a restaurant it was made with duck but when I make it at home I always use chicken because it's easier and less expensive. In my opinion chicken works fine for at home.
The following is my easy "at home" version of Cassoulet. If you're familiar with the dish and have some suggestions for me on how to improve it though, please share in the comments. I'm especially speaking to my French friends from the South here.
I started by cooking the onions until they turned transcent. I used duck fat to give it more flavor and because it's more traditional but you could use butter or oil as well.
While the onions were cooking I began to brown the chicken in a separate pan.
Next I cooked some smoked lardons, which are essentially French bacon that's cut in a different way than the North American style strips. This is mostly just for added flavor.
I don't think carrots are a traditional ingredient of the dish but I like to add extra vegetables to anything I cook and I personally feel like they go well with the beans. I also added 2 large cloves of garlic roughly chopped. I added these with the beans once all of the meat was cooked.
I can't find dried beans at our grocery store so I bought pre-cooked beans in a jar. I ended up buying two different varieties for some reason, I guess to see which I liked better. One of the jars was specifically meant for Cassoulet and had premade duck sausage in it. I found that variety to be much more flavorful but I ended up just throwing both jars into the pot. I've used canned beans before as well but they are much smaller then the jarred variety and the versions I've had at the restaurants use large white beans. If you're going to use dried beans for the dish I believe you have to soak them in salt water over night and then cook them in chicken or meat stock until tender.
I added nutmeg for flavor but I'm not exactly sure if that's traditional spices or not.
I also arranged the meat on top so that it would be exposed directly to the heat of the oven. Once everything is assembled, put it in the oven and cook on a medium to high heat for about an hour.
One of the main characteristic of a good Cassoulet is that it should form a bit of a crust on the surface. This isn't easy to do though since there can be a lot of liquid in the dish from the beans. Some recipes call for gelatin to be added to help this process along and some more traditional recipes call for pork skin or pork hocks to be added because they are both naturally gelatinous. I didn't want to add gelatin though so I basically just cooked it on high heat without a lid on so that the surface could caramelize.
The casserole vessel that Cassoulet is normally cooked in is also supposed to help the caramelization process because of its shape. A casserole dish is shaped like a cone with a wide top and a smaller more shallow bottom. This allows more surface area of the beans to be exposed to the heat of the oven. I'm going to try and find two of these dishes when I'm out and about but for now I just used our Le Creuset pot, which worked quite well.
After an hour in the oven all of the meat should be cooked, the liquid should be reduced and a crust should be begining to form on the surface. Serve and enjoy!
Let me know your thoughts on the dish in the comments and again, please share your tips and tricks so I can improve on my cooking!
