Fifty four degrees

The idea of making my own foie gras came from my sister, she’s doing it all the time and i though it was pretty cool. You can season it any way you like and it pretty damn good and satisfying.

It’s not very hard, really. All you need is a good quality fresh goose or duck liver (South west France origine is obviously the best), a bit of salt and a bit of pepper. You can also booze it up a tad. I added sliced truffles in this one.

Sous vide duck foie gras.

As I said above, it’s really not complicated to make your own foie gras, but it can be messy. Inside the velvety liver run a network of veins and other stringy bit that nobody want to see or eat. It has to go and that is the first step. In France you can buy them already deveined but they ‘re more expensive which beats the purpose of doing it yourself.

The first thing I’ll advise to do is to setup you Foie gras making station. a clean board, a knife, a fork and/spoon, the weighted salt and pepper, kitchen paper and a container to place the liver pieces.

Now it’s time to get dirty. Atop the board, using the knife as straight as possible scrap the thin membrane covering the surface of the liver. It’s not a big deal if you’re not doing it, but removing it helps the pieces to stick together when forming the ballottine. Once cleaned place the liver, smooth rounded side down on the board and with your hand, try to opening it up like you would open a piece of bread. You going to see the veins running trough it. Don’t be too fast and try not to break the stringy bits, you want to remove them as one. using a spoon or fork or even a butter knife dig around the veins like you were unearthing telephone cables from the ground. It doesn’t matter if you have to break up the liver in doing so. At the end of the day it will melt back with the rest when cooking.

Your liver is now hopefully de-veined. The first time I did it, I almost gave up. It took me something like an hour to get through it and the liver was in a state that resembled scrambled eggs. So if you feel the way I felt that time, know that you are not the only one. Nowadays I can de-vein a liver in around 15 minutes and that’s when it’s a hard one. So don’t give up, it will get better.

The hard bit is done. From this point on there’s various ways of going about finishing the foie gras. You’ll find different people proposing different variations it’s all up to you. I for one, don’t mind long process and I am a firm believer that the longer you care for a product the better it becomes, so here’s how I do it.

You lay all the pieces in the container making sure of having only one layer. Then you sprinkle half the salt all other ensurring that all of the piece get some and you repeat with half the pepper. Turn the pieces, exposing the non seasoned side and repeat. That’s the moment when you decide if you want to booze up your foie gras. Here again various school of thoughts. Over the times I  used Malt whiskey, port, cognac, armagnac and even calvados in my foies. Again, up to you. For this recipe I used a teaspoon of port and a teaspoon of calvados for 500 gr of liver. I didn’t want to use more because I was adding truffles and I didn’t want the alcohol to overpower them. The same way you seasoned the liver pieces with salt and pepper, sprinkle the two alcohols and shuffle them about to make sure that they all get their share.

This is where people’s ideas differ. Some will just tell you to form you ballottine and to cook the thing,  others like to let the seasoning permiete the meat. I like the latter. I cling film the container and place it in the fridge and leave it there not for an hour or two, but for 24 hours.

Twenty four hours passed and the salt, pepper, port and calvados did their magic and it’s time to shape the foie gras into what is called in French a ballottine, which is nothing more than a log. I lay several layers of cling film 3 or 4 is enough inside a terrine dish and I place the pieces of foie inside. When I reach the halfway point, I lay some slices of black truffles through the middle and finish with the rest of the liver. I fold the hanging cling flim and remove the whole thing from the terrine on a clean surface I roll it into a saussage and I tightly tie both extremities. it should be a nice saussagey shape and very tight. using a toothpick or other pointy thin object I look for air bubbles and burst them. If I was cooking it the traditional way I wouldn’t do that, the fat form the liver will seep through the tinny holes into the water, but because I going to sous vide the thing, this ballottine will be safely placed in a vacuum bag.

Which is the next step, but first I place back the ballottine in the fridge for an hour to firm up a bit and avoid the vacuum process from flattening the nice shape I spend some time building.

You take the liver saussage from the fridge and place it in a adequat size vacuum pouch. In a restaurant they would use retractable bags, to keep it nice and round but I’m not a restaurant and I don’t have a £2000 chamber vacuum sealer. So a normal bag will do. Vacuum pack your balotine, with the cling film still around it.

It is time to cook. I started my Swid and set it to 57 degrees for 45 minutes. Once at temperature, I plunged the pouch and walked away. If you don’t have a circulator or a SousVide supreme, you can still use the traditional way of cooking foie gras. You can heat up some water place your balotine in. Make sure that it is not boiling water but simmering if you have a thermometer use it to control the temperature or you can just ditch the balotine all together and use a terrine dish, in that case you place your terrine dish in an oven proof container with an inch or so of water at the bottom and cook it at 180°C. Every ten minutes or so, check the internal temperature of the foie gras, when it reaches 54°C remove it from the oven and let it cool, then place it in the fridge.

Foie gras is not at its best when it just been cooked, you need to leave it unopened for at least 3 to 4 days before you dig into it. it give time to the flavours to mingle and know each other better. Once opened it’s going to start oxydizing (Becoming grey) it’s not a big deal, it will keep, in an well close terrine for a week. If you have a vacuum sealer you can seal it back after each use and it will keep much longer. If it goes green and furry and that you can name it and play with it as a pet you might want to throw it out.