Ingredient

Cassoulet

Cassoulet is a slow-baked casserole of white beans and preserved and fresh meats from south-west France. It has a reputation for complexity that is mostly about time rather than difficulty, and the argument about what belongs in it is older and fiercer than any recipe.

The beans are the dish

It is easy to read a cassoulet as a meat dish with beans in it. It is the other way round: the beans are the substance, and the meats are there to flavour and enrich them.

That has a practical consequence. Cook the beans in something that tastes of something — the liquid from the pork, a stock made with rind and bones, aromatics — rather than in water, and cook them until they are genuinely creamy right through. An undercooked bean in a cassoulet is a fault that hours of baking will not repair, because once the fat and the reduced liquid have coated them they stop taking up water readily.

The traditional bean is the tarbais, a large, thin-skinned white haricot that holds its shape while going creamy inside. Any good dried haricot or cannellini works. Tinned beans do not: they are already at their final texture and cannot absorb the cooking liquid, which is most of what the long bake is for.

The regional argument

Three towns claim it and each excludes what the others insist on. Nobody is going to settle this.

Castelnaudary

Considered by many the original. Pork — shoulder, rind, sausage, sometimes ham hock — and no duck or mutton.

Carcassonne

Adds mutton or lamb, and in some accounts partridge in season.

Toulouse

Adds confit duck or goose, and Toulouse sausage. The version best known outside France.

What all three share

White beans, pork in some form, pork rind or skin for gelatine, slow baking, and a crust.

The practical position

Use what you can get. Confit duck legs, Toulouse sausage and pork belly is a reliable combination in Britain, and pork shoulder alone makes a very good one.

The method

Two days is comfortable; one long day is possible.

1. Soak the dried beans overnight.
2. Make a flavoured liquid: simmer pork rind, a ham hock or bones with onion, carrot, garlic, cloves and bay.
3. Cook the soaked beans gently in that liquid until nearly tender but not collapsing. Salt them towards the end.
4. Brown the fresh meats separately — pork belly or shoulder in chunks, sausages — and braise the pork until tender.
5. Layer everything in a wide earthenware dish: beans, meats, confit duck, sausages, more beans, with pork rind at the bottom.
6. Pour over enough of the bean liquid to just cover, and top with a little of the confit fat.
7. Bake uncovered in a low oven for two to three hours or more.
8. A crust forms on the surface. Break it with the back of a spoon and press it under, and let a new one form. Traditionally this is done seven times — the number is folklore, the technique is not: each broken crust thickens the dish and builds flavour.
9. It is ready when the beans are creamy, the liquid is thick, and there is a deep golden crust on top. Let it rest before serving.

What goes wrong

• Beans still firm at the end. They were not cooked enough before the bake, or acid — tomato, wine — went in too early and kept the skins tough.
• Beans collapsed to mush. They were boiled hard rather than simmered, or cooked fully before the bake as well as during it.
• Dry on top, soup underneath. Not enough liquid to start, or too hot an oven. Top up with bean liquid during the bake.
• No crust. Baked covered, or the oven was too cool. It needs to be uncovered and it needs time.
• Greasy. Too much confit fat. A little is essential and a lot pools.
• Bland. The beans were cooked in water. This is the most common and the most fixable.

Common questions