A plan for the chicken confit.

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After reviewing several sources of information, from duck based to traditional, as well as new ways of potentially doing things, I chose a path.

Currently I am brining the chicken.  A cool to lukewarm soak in slightly salted water seems to pull bad stuff out of chicken.  If the chicken, on their or my end, ended up being thawed too long, it tends to help that as well.  I thawed it correctly by time, but that isn't always enough.  So a soak.  Then I will drain and paper towel dry.  Then I add salt, time, garlic, and black pepper.

Here there are a number of ways to go.  Tradition says to then wrap it tightly, then let it cure a bit overnight.  If this was truly a system by which to preserve foul before refrigeration, it shouldn't need to go into the refrigerator.  However, to be just ever so slightly risk adverse, putting it in the fridge is probably the best bet.  I'm not always risk adverse.  With foul I generally am.  I don't trust it.  Every superman has a kryptonite.  Some have several.  I just have this feeling that bird meat is mine, or one of mine.

The other choices here are to brown it, then put it up; or simply wrap it tightly in foil and cook it slowly for a couple of hours.  The former just doesn't seem right by too many new and old methods.  Browning, I have always thought, was for at least after curing, but maybe (usually I would guess) after cooking in fat then cooling and finally chilling.  When you pull the thigh or drumstick out, with some of the fat stuck to it, then you fry it to crisp the skin.  The latter method is more for if you don't have a lot of fats.  I have two smaller drums from beef stock, another full bought drum of tallow, and plenty of coconut oil to fill out any needs that might remain.  Yeah, ol' Doom has some things going on in the kitchen and pantry.

I should check the kefir creme fraiche as well.  Ugh but it is murder to have things that take not minutes, or hours, but days to put together.  A puzzle, and any one thing could blow the whole process.  I am sure most things are survivable.  It's, just... getting the hopes up and falling.  It would be a sad thing.  I did, finally, pull the meats I wish to use in the bean, meat, and cheese pudding.  Sausage, cured smoked bacon, and a pork chop.  The other meat, of course, is the chicken confit which is in the making.  The great thing is I will have chicken for some time.  Just pulling out a piece, frying it then plating it with greens as a first course, and... nice.  If it works, or even not, I hope next to begin with duck confit.  Perhaps ordering enough duck fat to cook and maintain several sets of hindquarters.

I just wish someone enjoyed eating, who... well...  I'd love to cook for a few others, in a small setting... just once in a while.  My problem isn't the food, or cooking, it's more keep up the place so that people would eat here.  Have them bring bits, have some bits myself, make and split it out.  Actually, my next experiment will be for others, most likely.  At least if I keep the kitchen up.  A dessert.  Yeah, I won't be able to have any, other than cook sampling.  But I will probably make something in this next month, or the one after.  But for them, at their place.  Not for here.

Oh, right.  On to dishes, then a shower, then a break.  Finally on to laundry.  Actually, I will gather laundry right now and get it back.  I just hate trying to do dishes, and especially a shower, over washing.  It just doesn't work.  Later.