Cassoulet with Duck Confit

After reading the other review I was a little worried about how this would turn out, so I read other recipes and incorporated a few ideas from them to make this a keeper! Changes in the ingredients were to add bay leaves, rosemary, and pepper corns along with the thyme sprigs. Reduce the amount of water to 1 quart and when assembling the dish I added 1 5.5 oz can of V-8. Only 2 drumsticks of duck leg confit, top skin removed but reserved. Guanciale (cured hog jowl) rather than slab bacon. This is my Step 3. Preheat oven to 350°. Drain the beans reserving the liquid. Transfer 1/2 the beans to a large, deep baking dish and top with duck legs, garlic sausage, guanciale, top with remaining beans. Add enough of the liquid + the can of V-8 to just cover the beans. Top with the reserved duck skin and bake for at least 40 minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes. Remove duck skin and continue with step 4 as in the original recipe. We gave my recipe with these changes a 5 star plus rating!

I followed this recipe as an experiment, with misgivings rising about the combination of thick pancetta AND duck confit AND garlic sausage (and a whole head of garlic) AND slab bacon.  Next time I went with the Kenji Lopez-Alt recipe--which is an inspired hack, using chicken thighs instead of duck, gelatine instead of bread crumbs, and isn't hard to make--loved the result...and put this in the recycling bin.  Not F&W's best.