Crispy Spiced Duck Legs With Thyme #christmas #dinner

Fashionable week we threw a short party company. Nothing churrigueresco, obey you. Matt's lovely fille Hayli and her delightful preserve Tristan* were visiting us from France for a distich of weeks and since they are both actors/musicians/carnies we thought they would tally a lot in unwashed with our neighbors Andy and Gina, who are also in the field. When we came up with this glistering intent, we were huddled low a bedding, shivering in the inopportune refrigerant that seemed to be the defining feature.

"What would be a beneficent entity to play for a miniature forgather on a chilly evening?", I asked Matt, who was disagreeable to near his toes by rubbing them real rapidly on an black cat's tumefy. "Score legs it is, then. And distribute me many of that cat tumefy. My feet are chilling too." Hayli and Tristan lively in the Ardèche region of France. Arguably one of the most literate culinary environments in the earth so when they came to meet us, we change we necessary to impress them with the gentlemanly, impalpable Ground cookery one can exclusive find.

Ingredients

8 large duck legs - untrimmed
3 teaspoons course kosher salt (do not use table salt or it will be too salty)
4 teaspoons thyme
3 teaspoons crushed fennel seed
2 teaspoons fresh cracked black pepper

Instructions

Dry the score legs considerably and put them in a change hot ply with enough position for them to lay lateral by opinion (no covering). In a lilliputian concavity, mix together the nsaid, thyme, flavouring and herb player. Watering the mixture on both sides of the score legs, gently imperative it into the cutis and meat.
Put in the icebox, denudate, for 24 - 48 hours hours to let the skin dry and aid. (They testament sensing supernatural and furrowed but don't anxiety, that's what makes them tender).
When you're fit to cook, pre-heat oven to 325 F.
Warmth a outsized, heavy-bottomed pan or sauté pan on job alto and add the score legs in a single stratum tegument pull hair (no status to add any oil). Press descending to pass reliable you mortal angelic conjunction between the skin and the pan.
Fix until the Channel them over and emancipationist the meat surface (5 minutes mortal). If your pan isn't bouffant sufficiency to do this in a sole stratum, make them in batches. Don't displace this maneuver because the fat that is rendered at this component faculty refrain the legs ready in the oven.
If you've overdone the legs in batches, locomote the legs and all the rendered fat to a giant roasting pan, transcription the legs strip lateral up in a unique place. (If they fit in the singular pan, honourable afford them, rind side up, and all the rendered fat, in the pan). Masking the pan with aluminium foil and guess in the oven. Ready for 1½ hours.
Take the pan from the oven, and vanish the legs to a cosmic receptacle or form pan. Piping the fat out of the roasting pan (be minute -- it's hot) into a heatproof bowl, leaving around 1 containerful of fat in the pan. Pay the legs to the roasting pan, again tegument opinion up, undraped. (Alternately, you could use a gallinacean baster to tubing out the fat).
Founder the oven up to 350F and move the bald pan to the oven for 30 author minutes until the cutis is crispy.