Garbure
The Gascon soup of cabbage, beans and preserved duck, thick enough that the spoon should stand up in it. A meal, not a course.
Photograph credit: Garbure by Arnaud 25 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The confit goes in for the last twenty minutes only. It is already cooked, and an hour in the pot shreds it into the broth and leaves nothing to eat; twenty minutes warms it through and lets it give up some fat without disintegrating. The cabbage goes in in two stages for the same reason — half early to melt into the soup and thicken it, half late so there is something with texture left in the bowl.
Questions About Garbure
How long does Garbure take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 2 hours of cooking, plus 8 hours of soaking the beans, so allow 10 hours 25 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 8.
Garbure: Step by Step
Tap a step to highlight it, or turn on Cook Mode for large type and step-by-step focus.
-
Drain the soaked beans and put them in a large pot with the bacon, clove-studded onion, garlic, bay, thyme and water. Simmer 60 minutes.
-
Add the carrots, turnips, leeks and the finely shredded half of the cabbage. Simmer 30 minutes — this half will melt down and thicken the soup.
-
Add the potatoes and the cabbage wedges and simmer 20 minutes more.
-
Scrape the fat off the confit legs and set the legs aside. Add a tablespoon of that fat to the pot.
-
Add the duck legs and simmer a final 20 minutes, just to heat them through.
-
Lift out the bacon and the onion. Season with salt and pepper — taste first, as the bacon and confit are both salty.
-
Serve with a duck leg in each bowl and plenty of bread (optional).
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Ingredient substitutions.
Something wrong or unclear in this recipe? Report a problem with this recipe.
A Few Pointers
- Confit in for the last twenty minutes only.
- Cabbage in two stages — half to thicken, half for texture.
- Taste before salting. The bacon and duck do a lot of it.
Swaps and Variations
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
What to Serve With It
Country bread · A glass of Madiran · Mustard
Keeping and Reheating
Refrigerated for 4 days and better every day. It freezes for 3 months.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Gluten-free when served without the country bread.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
You Might Also Like
More French cooking and lunch ideas from Weekly Delight.
Roasted Garlic Soup
Whole roasted garlic heads simmered with potato and stock for 40 minutes and blended into a smooth, mellow soup…
Pan Bagnat
A salade niçoise pressed into a round loaf until the bread soaks up the dressing. Bagnat means bathed, and the…
Frisée aux Lardons
Curly endive with hot bacon, a vinegar-deglazed dressing and a poached egg on top. The dressing is made in the bacon…
Salade Lyonnaise
Bitter leaves, a hot bacon dressing poured over so they half-wilt, croutons fried in the same fat, and a poached egg…
Pipérade
Peppers, tomatoes and onions cooked down to a jam with Espelette, then eggs stirred through. Basque, and often eaten…
Salade Niçoise
A composed salad, not a tossed one: each element dressed and arranged separately so every forkful is deliberate…