Comfort food that I look forward to every fall.

Essentially a bean dish at heart, cassoulet is a long and slow cooked stew with a variety of meats, white beans, and vegetables. It’s historically made with, duck confit, pork sausage, and French bacon, but you can vary that with chicken and other types of sausages or bacon.

This particular version is made with sausage, duck confit, thick bacon and pork loin.

To make cassoulet for a crowd (or freeze leftovers), soak a pound of white beans in water for a few hours (not more than 24).

When ready to start add the soaked beans to a large pot, add broth to cover, a bay leaf and a couple whole cloves.

Fry a few slices of cut bacon and add a diced onion, two diced carrots, two ribs diced celery’s and few cloves of minced garlic. Add this mixture to the bean pot.

While the beans simmer, separately cook the meats you are using, in duck fat if you have it.

Put the bean and meat mixtures together into an oven safe pan, add more stock to barely cover what’s in the pan, dust with bread crumbs and slow cook in the oven for at least an hour. The longer you cook it, the better and more thick your stew will be.