Week 4 - Confit

Where has the year gone?! Behind on these challenge posts again...

I thought about skipping the Week 4 challenge, confit. It was a repeat of a challenge I had done in the past, and I don't think I was especially excited about it that time either. I think confit is delicious, but most recipes use a lot of oil, and that oil could go a long way if used in other methods of cooking. Especially during these pandemic times when it's harder to just drop by a grocery store on a whim, I can't see "wasting" that amount of oil on a confit recipe. After doing a lot of searching, I found a recipe for potato confit on Ricardo that only used 1/4 cup of oil, and that was something I was much more comfortable doing.

The ingredients for the confit portion of dinner, as adapted, were:

- 24 oz whole fingerling potatoes ($4.99)

- 1/4 cup olive oil + a little extra (unmeasured) ($0.50)

- 5 cloves of garlic ($0.33)

- dried rosemary ($0.10)

- dried thyme ($0.10)

- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)

The cost for the potato confit was about $6.05. We ate the potatoes alongside a Just Egg salsa scramble and some sautéed (neglected it when I got busy, so more like stewed) zucchini, for a total of about $13.15.

Making the confit was pretty simple. After washing the potatoes, add them to a large baking dish (probably too large for the amount of potatoes we had) with the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt, and black pepper. Bake at 350 degrees for about 80 minutes.

They seemed a little dry when I pulled them out, nothing like the soft, oily, luscious potatoes I was expecting from something called confit, so I added them to a bowl under a foil tent with some extra olive oil, hoping that letting them sit for a little while would help them soften.

After letting them steam a bit, the potatoes were softer, but still not as melt-in-your-mouth soft as I was expecting. The ones on the bottom in the oil were the best, so I guess the whole dish just needed more oil and/or a smaller baking dish so they could bathe in the oil in the oven more.

Overall, the potatoes were fine, but more like roasted potatoes than what I would expect from confit. Still happy that I did this instead of a recipe with more oil, but not sure I would make this again instead of my usual roasting methods.