Thomas Keller's Slow Cooker Cassoulet - Classic French Comfort Food! (2024)

FAQs

What do the French serve with cassoulet? ›

You can serve cassoulet on its own with a salad and bread on the side, but it's traditional to accompany it with something colorful . . . usually greens of some sort. If you're looking for a great meal to prepare for the colder weather, try making a cassoulet.

cassoulet, French dish of white beans baked with meats; it takes its name from its cooking pot, the cassole d'Issel. Originating in Languedoc in southwest France, cassoulet was once simple farmhouse fare, but it has been elaborated into a rich and complex dish.

A meaty stew of poultry, sausage, pork, and beans, all under a rich, dark brown crust.

Cassoulet, a hearty slow-simmered stew of sausage, confit (typically duck), pork, and white beans, is one of the great hallmarks of French country cuisine. The best versions are cooked for hours until the beans and meat meld into a dish of luxuriant, velvety richness.

Castelnaudary is widely regarded as France's capital of cassoulet, and it's the only place in the world that can claim to hold the official recipe.

Convention has it that the cassoulet of Castelnaudary is based largely on pork and pork rind, sausage, and (sometimes) goose; the Carcassonne variety contains leg of mutton and (occasionally) partridge; and the cassoulet of Toulouse includes fresh lard, mutton, local Toulouse sausage, and duck or goose.

There are three types of cassoulet – the Holy Trinity. There's the 'Father' (pork and goose), the 'Son' (mutton and partridge), and the 'Holy Ghost' (sausage, mutton, and duck).

All the ingredients for a good cassoulet can be found in most grocery stores. Purists will argue that you need to find real tarbais beans but I have found white kidney beans work just as well. They will mention that there are 3 versions of true cassoulets (Castelnaudary, Carcassone, and Toulouse).

Cozy up with this rich, smoky stew brimming with chorizo and buttery white beans from Asturias—any night of the week. Spain is bean country. In Castile, whole meals revolve around giant judiones, butter beans cooked in thick, bacon-scented stock.

According to tradition, cassoulet was invented in 1355 in the town of Castelnaudary, under siege by the English during the Hundred Years' War. In medieval times the dish was referred to as an estouffet. The Dictionnaire de l'Académie française dates the term cassoulet to no earlier than the 19th century.

What vegetables to serve with cassoulet? ›

It's a traditional one pot meal. If someone wants an accompaniment, I would go with lightly dressed salad greens to balance the heavy fatty goodness of the cassoulet.

Mary Anne here. Preparing a traditional French Cassoulet (a la Julia Child) is incredibly time-consuming and can be fairly pricey since it requires hard-to-find ingredients like goose and mutton.

Usually Toulouse sausage is most commonly used in traditional french cassoulet, a sausage made from a blend of pork and duck meat. Chicken breast – I used boneless and skinless chicken breast but thighs can be substituted if that's all you have. Salt & pepper – To taste.

In 1929, Proposer Montagné, the famous chef from Carcassonne, acknowledged the supremacy of Castelnaudary Cassoulet in his book 'Le Festin Occitan' saying, "Cassoulet is the king of Occitan cuisine."

Seafood cassoulet introduces a lighter variant. When choosing wine, consider the dish's main ingredients: robust meats pair well with full-bodied reds like Syrah or Malbec. If the cassoulet includes seafood, opt for a fuller white wine like Chardonnay.

Banquet French Service

Each food item is served by the server from platters to their individual plates. Guests are served from the left. Anything that is added to a plate by a server after it has been placed in front of the guest – soup in bowl, salad dressing, sauce on dessert, etc. – is part of this type of service.

There are many options to choose from, but France's national dish is probably the Boeuf Bourguignon. Well known in and outside France, it represents the beauty of the cuisine by transforming a simple piece of meat into an intensely flavored dish, only composed with national ingredients.

A cassoulet, of course, is something else entirely, and usually refers to that long-simmering stew from southwest France of duck, lamb or pork, and white beans. Confused? Maybe it will help if you roll up your sleeves and bake this cassolette recipe—a luscious gratin of chicken and noodles rife with French flavors.