Cassoulet is a top-tier, deeply unhealthy cold-weather comfort food and I've adapted a more intensive version to my tastes and laziness. If you want to make the real deal then go with this one. It's worth spending two days on because you get at least 10 large servings out of it and it tastes great, plus most of the cook time is just waiting around.

Ingredients

Meats

• High-collagen pork cut with as much skin as you can find, e.g. shank or shoulder (I prefer it with bone so you can simmer it on day 1 for extra flavor ), cut into medium-sized stew pieces

• 1 small or 1/2 large package of high-quality kielbasa/silesian sausage (if you want to be more authentic but can't find toulouse sausages, they're just pork and garlic so any simple one is fine. Bong or italian/sicilian sausages will frick you up. if you do use non-smoked sausage then you should also add 1-2 ham hocks for smokiness; you could settle with bacon but it wouldn't taste nearly as good)

• 1-2 confit duck legs or leftover slow-roast duck (I usually make this with leftovers from this ridiculously good duck recipe)

• optional pancetta and/or ham hock

• a large amount of chicken, turkey, or duck stock (for this recipe, I'd recommend getting/making real stock but it's still good with boullion)

Vegetables/Legumes

• 2 medium-large onions (I used breton pink this time )

• 1 bulb garlic (you will use half in day 1 and half in day 2)

• 1 small can tomato paste

• 3 medium carrots

• 2 celery ribs

• 1 lb - 1 kg dried cannellini beans (you can use other white beans except for lima)

Herbs/Spices

• a few sprigs thyme

• a small handful parsley

• 2 bay leaves

• ~1 tbsp non-smoked paprika (non-authentic but I like it)

• copious salt and pepper

Other crap

• A small hard or hardish piece of white bread like a mini baguette, processed into crumbs on day 2 (you could also use panko breadcrumbs)

• Large dutch oven. If you don't have one then a casserole dish or oven-safe stock pot might work, but you'll need to keep an eye on it because idk how it'd change the cook time.

Steps

Day 1

1. Dice onions into small pieces, mince half of the garlic, and cut carrots into shreds (you could probably use a food processor for the carrots if you're lazy)

2. Brown pork on high temp in large stock pot (for oil I'd recommend duck or goose fat)

3. Once pork is sufficiently browned, remove, lower the temp, and add onions, carrots, garlic, and bay leaf to the pot

4. Stir the onions etc. to make sure that it's picking up all the brown shit from the pork. Once the onions look translucent, add tomato paste and cook for a couple mins, then paprika and cook for a few secs

5. Dump the pork back in and add stock along with thyme, parsley, whole celery, salt, and pepper

6. Simmer for about 1.5 hr or until the pork starts to become tender. Adjust the seasonings as needed- keep in mind that beans dilute flavor so you want it to be a little more salty and seasoningy than you'd prefer.

7. After the pork becomes tender, boil the beans in another pot for 5 mins, then drain and add the beans to the pot with the other stuff

8. Simmer until the beans are al dente, about 45 mins-1.5 hr for cannellinis

9. Let cool, remove bone if your cut had it, celery, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs, then dump your slop into a container and refrigerate until tomorrow

Day 2

1. Take the container out of the refrigerator and skim as much fat as you can off the top, reserving it for later

2. Process the other half of your garlic bulb into paste (if you don't want to use a food processor, you can do this by putting salt on a cutting board and finely mincing the garlic. You can also just finely mince the garlic, it'll still taste good) and add it into the container, stirring it all around to evenly distribute it

3. Rub down the dutch oven with duck or goose fat (a neutral oil is ok if you don't have it)

4. Pour half of the pre-cassoulet into the dutch oven, then pull duck into pieces and layer it on top

5. Add the rest of the pre-cassoulet on top of the duck.

6. The liquid in the cassoulet at this point should be at or just above the top layer of beans. If it's not, add some additional water or stock

7. Bake uncovered at 325°F for around 1.5 hr. If you had too much liquid at the start then you might need to cook it longer so the liquid simmers down. If you see a brown crust forming at the top while it cooks, open the oven and stir it into the cassoulet because that's what makes it really good.

8. While the cassoulet cooks, slice the sausage into rounds and brown the rounds on the stove.

9. After 1.5 hr or the liquid in the dutch oven descends to be at or just below the top layer of beans if you have too much liquid, take the dutch oven out, give the top layer of the cassoulet a stir, sink the sausage rounds into the cassoulet, and add bread crumbs to the top. Drizzle some of the fat you reserved on top of the bread crumbs (mine didn't have much fat this time so I used fat from the confit)

10. Lower the temp to 275°F and cook until the bread crumbs are deeply browned.

11. Enjoy!