Duck parmentier
- Preparation 25 min
- Refrigeration 3 to 4 days
- Cooking 1 h
- Servings 4
- Freezing Absolutely
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🦆 A pâté chinois that took a turn
I have always been obsessed with duck confit. I have always loved a good pâté chinois. At some point I figured I would just make both at once, and that thing has a name: duck parmentier.
It is easy. The duck lands in your pan already cooked, the mash happens while that goes on, and assembly takes five minutes. Serve it to friends on a winter night and watch what happens. A holiday dinner, a long evening, or the dish you pull out when you want to impress a date.
🥔 The mash is half the dish
Potatoes and celeriac. The celeriac is not there to sound fancy. It is there for taste, a peppery, faintly earthy edge that keeps the mash from tasting like a school cafeteria, and it is there for texture: it holds better than potato, so the mash stands up under the cheese instead of collapsing.
You want a ricer. By hand is fine, you will get there, but it is not the same thing. And no fork furrows on top before it goes in the oven.
🍺 What keeps the duck from drying out
Three things, and it takes all three: the confit fat still caught in the meat, the dark beer you pour over it, and the vegetables letting go of their water in the pan.
Drop one and it dries. The dark beer brings caramelized notes that stock will never give you. I wrote it down as optional in the original recipe and that was a mistake.
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🍺 Use the beer
The original recipe said optional. It is not really optional. You can swap in chicken stock and it will work, but you want the beer.
A brown one. Malt cooked long brings caramelized depth that stock does not have. Sixty millilitres, that is all, and it changes the whole dish. It reduces for two minutes with the duck and the vegetables and there is not a drop of liquid left in the pan by the time you assemble.
🍲 Small cast iron dishes, not ramekins
This is dinner, not dessert. Crème brûlée ramekins are too small and too tall for this. What I use are small oven-safe cast iron dishes, on the long side. You get surface for the cheese and a portion that actually looks like a meal.
One big family dish works too and nobody will complain. It just looks better in small dishes, and everyone gets their own gratin.
🥄 The ricer
A ricer is what it takes for a proper mash. By hand is fine, but there is a difference and you can see it.
Never a food processor though. The blades pull the starch out of the potato and you end up with grey glue.
🧀 Raclette, sliced thin
One or two slices per dish. It melts without separating and it browns well.
🔥 Broil on the middle rack
Not right up top. Two inches from the element and the cheese browns in thirty seconds while the bottom of the dish is still lukewarm. In the middle, everything arrives at the same time.
📅 Making it ahead
This is one of the rare dishes I assemble the night before without thinking twice. Duck mixture, mash on top, cheese, foil, fridge, up to twenty-four hours.
Pull the dishes out half an hour before they go in the oven. Otherwise the cheese is already golden and the centre is still cold. When you have people over, that is exactly why this dish is good: everything is done, all that is left is the broiler.
✅ What to serve with my duck parmentier?
Something sharp on the side, otherwise it is rich on rich. A green salad with a vinaigrette that bites does the job, my green couscous salad with pecans, edamame and feta works too, or my green beans with white wine and lemon if you would rather have a hot vegetable. The dish is already the show. The side does not need to try.
And if you want to make the duck confit yourself instead of buying it, that is my homemade duck confit with apricot beer. It is the one I use. There is always some left over, and when there is a lot left over it ends up as duck rillettes with beer.
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Ingredients
- 2 large yellow-flesh potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1 large celeriac, peeled and diced
- 3 tbsp (45 ml) butter
- ¼ cup (60 ml) warm 15% cream
- 1 tsp (5 ml) olive oil
- 3 celery stalks, sliced
- 1 leek white, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp (15 ml) fresh thyme leaves
- 4 cooked duck confit legs, deboned and shredded, about 1¼ lb (560 g) total
- ¼ cup (60 ml) dark beer
- 3½ oz (100 g) raclette cheese, thinly sliced
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Preparation
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and celeriac and cook for 35 to 40 minutes, until very tender. Drain well and return to the pot over medium heat.
- Mash the potatoes and celeriac with a ricer until smooth. Add the butter and continue mashing while it melts. Stir in the warm cream, season with salt and pepper, adjust if needed, and set aside.
- In another saucepan over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the celery, leek, and garlic and sauté for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring regularly. Add the thyme and cook for 1 minute.
- Add the duck and the dark beer, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring to warm everything through and reduce the beer. Remove from heat.
- Preheat the oven to broil, rack in the middle.
- Divide the duck mixture between 4 small oven-safe cast iron dishes. Top generously with the potato and celeriac mash, without dragging a fork across it. Add 1 or 2 slices of raclette on top of each portion.
- Broil until the cheese is melted and nicely browned. Let rest a few minutes before serving.
It is a two-layer dish: shredded meat on the bottom, potato mash on top, browned in the oven. The name comes from Parmentier, the man who spent his life convincing France to eat potatoes. In mine the meat is duck confit and the mash is cut with celeriac.
Hachis parmentier is the same build with beef, either ground or braised and pulled. Same family, different meat. My hachis parmentier and my red wine braised beef cottage pie both live on that branch.
The meat, and what is hiding in the middle. Shepherd’s pie is lamb under mashed potato, and the North American cottage pie version usually runs on ground beef. Quebec goes further and adds a corn layer, which makes it pâté chinois, a different dish again.
Duck parmentier has no lamb, no ground beef and no corn. It has duck confit, a mash cut with celeriac, and raclette melted on top. If shepherd’s pie is what you came for, my red beer braised beef shepherd’s pie is the one you want.
Technically no, you can swap in chicken stock. In practice, you want it. The brown ale brings caramelized depth that stock does not have, and that is exactly why it is in the recipe.
Sixty millilitres does not taste like beer on the plate. It just tastes better.
Yes, and it is a good idea. Assemble the dishes completely, cheese and all, cover them and keep them in the fridge for up to twenty-four hours.
The next day, let them come back to room temperature for half an hour before the broiler. Cheese browns fast. What you want to avoid is a perfect golden top over a cold centre.
Three to four days in the fridge in a sealed container. Reheat it in a 350 °F oven rather than the microwave. The mash turns rubbery in the microwave and there is no coming back from it.
In the freezer, three months. Freeze it before the cheese goes on if you think of it, and thaw it in the fridge overnight before it sees the oven.
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