Duck Gizzards Confit

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Duck gizzards confit has become one of my go-to recipes every winter for more than a decade now. It is my favorite gizzard recipe because it results in soft, meaty gizzards that resemble roast beef more than the fried, crunchy things you get at bars.

duck gizzard confit on a plate
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Duck gizzards and other giblets are probably the least-used parts of the ducks and geese we bring home, and this is a shame. Even many who happily eat chicken or turkey giblets at the holidays, or as a bar snack, wrinkle their noses at eating the heart, liver and gizzard of their wild birds. I have no idea why this is, because it sure ain’t because of flavor.

Allow me to give you an iron-clad, no-fail recipe for gizzards that will turn haters into lovers.

I’m talking about corned, confit gizzards. Yep. Corned, as in corned beef. A simple brine followed by a simple bath in a crockpot will turn out some of the finest meat in the waterfowl world. The flavor is virtually identical to corned beef, and you can control the normally crunchy texture of the gizzard by how long you cook them.

This is my favorite way to eat duck or goose gizzards. Sliced thin or kept whole, and tossed with a simple sauté of wild mushrooms, a bitter greens salad, or with sauerkraut and German spätzle — it’s a really killer dish!

Cleaning a gizzard is easy. Technically, a gizzard is a muscular stomach: Two half-moons of meat powering a nasty, leathery sack full of grit. The bird uses those muscles and that grit to grind things like fibrous plants and tough seeds. You don’t eat the sack and the grit, of course. You slice the two lobes of meat off each end of the gizzard and call it a day. You don’t need to ever see the inside of the sack at all.

It’s as easy as I just made it out to be. Take a short, sharp knife (a penknife is perfect) and look at the gizzard: Slice what’s obviously meat away from the gushy stuff at the center. The more you do, the closer to the edge you can get, and the more meat you will come away with.

Here’s a post on how to clean a gizzard

I like to slip the tip of the knife under that silverskin on the sides of the meat to remove it, but in this preparation you don’t even need to do that. You can clean a gizzard in literally 10 seconds.

Which birds to use? All geese, some of which can have gizzards that weigh a half-pound or more, and big ducks like mallards, canvasbacks, redheads, gadwall and pintail. Interestingly, coots have giant gizzards for their size – about the same size as a mallard’s – so if you shoot coots take the gizzards; that’s a Cajun tip, by the way. (Ditto for pukekos, if you happen to live in New Zealand.)

A goose gizzard next to a plucked hen teal.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Once you have your cleaned duck gizzards, you brine them like corned beef in the fridge for a day, then put them in a crockpot with some broth and maybe a bay leaf or two, turn it on and walk away. You can eat them as little as 6 hours later, but the real magic happens a day later.

Yep, you heard right: If you crockpot the duck gizzards for a full 24 hours, they come out looking exactly like corned beef and so tender you can squash them with a fork.

Give this a go and you will be become a believer.

A word on the salt. You will need to measure your meat here, as the salt is added in proportion to its weight. Weigh your gizzards in grams and then measure out 2 percent of that weight in sea salt or kosher salt. This method of curing will prevent your gizzards from getting too salty no matter how long it is in the cure.

Your best bet is to massage the salt and spices into the duck gizzards, then vacuum seal it and set it in the fridge for a few days before proceeding.

duck gizzard confit on a plate
4.80 from 5 votes

Duck Gizzard Confit

Everything in here is pretty easy to find, with the possible exception of the pink curing salt. I buy mine in bulk online, but some butcher shops will have it. You can also use Morton’s Tenderquick in a pinch; follow that product’s instructions for corned beef to know how much of the stuff you should use. You can also skip the curing salt altogether, but the gizzards will not be that pretty rosy color.
Course: Appetizer
Cuisine: American
Servings: 8 people
Author: Hank Shaw
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 12 hours
Total Time: 12 hours 20 minutes

Ingredients 

  • 1 pound cleaned gizzards
  • 9 grams kosher salt, about 1 tablespoon
  • 3 grams curing salt (Instacure No. 1) about 1/4 teaspoon
  • 1 quart chicken or duck broth
  • 2 bay leaves

Instructions 

  • Mix the salt and curing salt and coat the cleaned gizzards with it. Make sure there is some salt on every piece. Vacuum seal this or put into a closed container in the fridge for 24 to 72 hours. 
  • When you are ready to cook, remove the gizzards from the salt and rinse. Put the gizzards in a crockpot and cover with the broth. Add water if they are not completely submerged. Add the bay leaves and set the crockpot to high. My crockpot will never hit a simmer even at high, and this is what you want: So set your slow cooker at whatever setting will be nice and hot, but not simmering. Cook the gizzards for at least 6 hours (they’ll still be crunchy though), and as many as 24 hours if you want silky, tender meat.

ALTERNATE METHOD

  • If you have lots of duck fat handy, or olive oil, you can cook the gizzard in this instead of broth to make a proper confit. Follow the same curing step, but then rinse and submerge in fat, or, alternatively, put the cured gizzards into a sous vide bag, add lots of duck fat, seal, and cook in a hot water bath at about 160°F for the same amount of time you would in a crockpot.

Notes

Once the gizzards are corned, they will keep up to 2 weeks in the fridge, so long as you keep them in the broth you cooked them in.

Keys to Success

  • Make sure the gizzard are well cleaned. Here's how to clean a gizzard. 
  • Any gizzard will work here. 
  • I do prefer the sous vide fat method here, as it makes silky, soft gizzards. I include the other methods to give you some flexibility.
  • 24 hours is not too long to cook these things. The result is that you can squash them with a fork afterwards. 

Nutrition

Calories: 82kcal | Carbohydrates: 1g | Protein: 13g | Fat: 3g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 154mg | Sodium: 555mg | Potassium: 207mg | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 87IU | Vitamin C: 4mg | Calcium: 14mg | Iron: 2mg

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Tried this recipe? Tag me today!Mention @huntgathercook or tag #hankshaw!

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About Hank Shaw

Hey there. Welcome to Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, the internet’s largest source of recipes and know-how for wild foods. I am a chef, author, and yes, hunter, angler, gardener, forager and cook. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook.

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26 Comments

  1. I’ve only found duck and goose gizzards for sale in Europe. Here in the midwest, chicken is plentiful and cheap, but always served fried and hard. I haven’t tried the slow cooker, but I get mine tender (make sure there’s no yellow lining, split into bite-size, dont mind the silver ligament, it will soften, wash and squeeze under cold water to remove some blood, less gamey) with a 1.5-2 hr below-boil (occasional bubble, 200-205 F) in water covered by an inch, aromatics (per lb, 1/4 onion, 1 smashed garlic clove, 2 cloves of clove, 1 bay leaf, 4-5 peppercorns. Add a stalk of celery and carrot if handy). Skim the scum. After 90 min, test for tenderness. I sometimes want a little al dente to remain , and that may happen at 1.5, 1.75, or 2 hrs. More tender for salad or stir fry, a bit chewier if you want to bread and quick-fry for dipping nuggets. The broth (you may have to top off water as it evaporates) is loaded with flavor and collagen. It will gel when cool. The trickiest part is regulating temp on a gas stove. Thus the cooker sounds handy, just longer. Once they’re done, it’s bread-and fry, slice for salads, add to pasta, stir-fry, and sometimes cold “meat-cookies” for a road trip

    1. Ed: Not sure what you are referring to. The picture is just one way to serve your gizzards. I didn’t develop a specific recipe for that picture, just for the technique of cooking gizzards.

  2. Hey Hank,

    You had a sous vide corned gizzard recipe a while ago, but I can’t find it on the site anymore. Can you repost it?

  3. Hi Hank. I just processed five Muscovies. I split the gizzards, cleaned out the grit and removed the coarse lining. Do I also need to remove the smooth, white lining inside the gizzard, in order to make this recipe? Or do I leave it on?

    Thanks! Love your website.

    1. Rebecca: No, but it helps. The silverskin will soften during the long cooking, but I like my gizzards totally cleaned.

  4. Thank you for the wonderful recipe. We are small flock producers and I hate to see any part of our wonderful pastured birds go to waste. My first thought, like Tamra, was that a slow cooker might do the job, however I’ll be sure to check the temps first. My oven has a keep warm option at 170 degrees farenheit. An oven poach might work for the sous-vide stage. What are your thoughts on that?

    Shemack

  5. how do you clean the gizzard before you freeze it? I mean, get the food and stuff out. I just tossed a few because they smelled like poo. I dont eat poo.

  6. The Crockpot really isn’t the best solution. Most slow cookers actually get to the same temperature whether you select low or high. The difference is that low takes longer to get to that temperature. If you want to use your slow cooker, you really need to know the temperature your cooker gets to. What I do is put the thing on low and let it go for a few hours with the lid off and then take the temp of the water. Then put the lid on for a couple hours and take the temp again. Repeat that process with the cooker set to high. Finally, test how hot it gets with the lid on and off with the cooker set to warm.

    I actually do all my confit in the slow cooker, but I have a PID to control the temperature.

  7. Tamra: I think a crockpot would work great – keep it on “low,” though. If you do this, comment back here with the results. I don’t have a slow cooker, but I bet a lot of other people do.

    Kate: I am sorely hoping to…

    Christine: It will definitely work, but gizzards will need several hours longer to cook than will the hearts. I’d give the gizzards an extra 2 hours over the hearts.

  8. I love this recipe and plan to use it often. No duck or goose gizzards up my way however, but I can get containers of chicken gizzards and hearts and am thinking that including the hearts couldn’t be a bad thing. What do you think?

  9. hey Hnak, you might just get the Gascon Legion of Honor for this one. We probably consume more gesiers per person than the average frenchman down here in foie gras land. I just completed a week of conserving fat ducks and geese, this will certainly go on my menu. Thanks! and come see us soon…

  10. Hank, this looks like such a killer dish and I’m definitely going to make it. I’m just wondering how well you think a Crock-Pot would work here instead of the the sealed bag thing?

  11. Kim: Nope, no caramelization. If you want it, though, sear the whole gizzard on all sides before slicing it thin. I will do that sometimes.

  12. Hank, you get no caramelization this way. Don’t you need it? I need to play with sous vide – I know nothing about it. Best, Kim

  13. Great recipe Hank. Hopefully a limit of turkey’s this Spring will yield enough gizzard to give it a try. 5 weeks and counting!

  14. If you want to use olive oil, just put the amount you want in the vacuum bag and put the whole bag in the freezer (upright so the oil won’t spill). After a few hours, the oil will be solid. Put in the gizzards and then seal. Since I don’t have a chamber vacuum, this is how I seal anything liquid. Occasionally, I want to seal something that has too much sugar/salt/alcohol to set up in the freezer. In this case, mix in a little gelatin, let it set and then seal.