When it’s time to make dinner, I enjoy the conceptualizing, I love the cooking and, when I have time, I luxuriate in the chopping and knife work as a slow, pleasant meditation. And then there are those nights when making dinner seems almost impossible, not because the recipe itself is difficult or the ingredients challenging to source, but because time is short and the prep work seems insurmountable.
That’s where mushroom confit comes into play. With a little bit of weekend work, this jar of umami sits in the refrigerator, ready for recipe inspiration all week long. Use the preserved mushrooms for quick pasta sauces or pizza toppings, or tuck them under the skin of a chicken for pan roasting. Meaty and satisfying, the mushrooms are waiting to be dashed across a puff pastry tart, studded through bread pudding, rolled up in a taco or spooned into an omelet. Mushroom confit is a great place to start almost anything in the kitchen.
“Confit” derives from the French verb for “preserve,” and as a DIY technique it refers to a slow, low poach in fat or oil (or sugar syrup, in the case of fruits). It takes time and some management. A confit should never get hotter than 200 degrees or you risk its becoming a deep-fry. Confits have no crispy edges; they are soft and gentle. Confit techniques may be applied to all sorts of foods, from garlic cloves to duck legs, sweet onions to pork rillettes.
Don’t underestimate how the process changes the texture of food or how the flavor intensifies. The oil softens the structure, but somehow the food is neither oily nor mushy, but velvety and rich. The umami factor is amplified, especially as the confit ages.