Ursula’s Cassoulet

Serves 6, with leftovers

Takes 4 hours

Ursula Thorpe lived near Tim’s first farm in Harwell. Originally an outside caterer, in the early 2000s she joined the Ginger Pig to help us organize Christmas. Even after she moved to rural France, she travelled to London to work with us every December for 15 years. Today, she lives in a village outside Castelnaudary, one of three places that claim to be the birthplace of cassoulet, a rich French stew of beans, pork belly, sausage and confit duck. (The other two claimants are Toulouse and Carcassonne.) This is our slightly adapted version of her traditional Castelnaudary recipe – to make it properly requires cooking French white lingot beans from scratch, but they are hard to find in the UK (and would mean using more than one pot). If you would like to cook cannellini or haricot beans for this, start with about 500g (1lb 2oz) of dried beans, soaked overnight then cooked in stock. As Ursula reminds us, cassoulet is even better the next day.

Ginger Pig One Pot: First published in 2025 by Mitchell Beazley, an imprint of Octopus Publishing Group Ltd

Photography copyright © Sam A Harris 2025

Place a deep heavy-based, ovenproof frying pan over a medium heat (our pan is 30cm/ 12 inches across). Place the duck in the pan until the fat melts. Remove the duck and set aside in a large bowl. If any duck cooking liquor has run into the pan, let it bubble away until just the duck fat remains, then add the chunks of pork belly meat. Working in batches, sauté the meat until browned all over. Remove and place in the bowl with the duck legs. Repeat with the sausage pieces and add them to the bowl, too.

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F), Gas Mark 2.

Line the base of the pan with the strips of pork belly skin. Add about one-third of the beans, along with the garlic and bacon. Arrange the pork belly pieces in a single layer on top and then cover the meat with the rest of the beans. Nestle the chunks of sausage into the beans and rest the duck legs on top, skin-side up, making sure the meat underneath is touching the liquid so that it can’t dry out. Tip any duck cooking juices you might have into the pan and any juices from the bowl, too. Finally, pour in enough stock to just cover the beans, then place over a medium heat and bring up to simmering.

Place in the oven, uncovered, for 2¾ hours. Stir 2 or 3 times during cooking – traditionally, cassoulet should be stirred 7 times! – each time removing the duck legs first, so that they can slowly crisp up on top without being submerged. Make sure the duck isn’t drying out; if it is, remove it from the pan and place back on the cassoulet just for the last 30 minutes of cooking. If the liquid levels drop and the beans start to dry out, add a little more stock, or water.

Remove from the oven and taste; season if necessary. Confit duck is salted and if your sausages are also salty, the cassoulet may not need any salt at all.

Place a couple of baguettes on the table, and let everyone dig in.

NOTE: We tend to use chicken stock for this dish, but if you want to make proper cassoulet stock from scratch, place the pork belly bones and pork skin into a large stock pot along with a chicken carcass, 2 onions, 2 carrots, some salt and pepper and 3 litres (5¼ pints) of water. Simmer for an hour, then strain. Save the pork belly skin for the cassoulet. Leftover stock can be used in other dishes.

3 confit duck legs, halved

1kg (2lb 4oz) pork belly, meat cut into chunks, skin cut into strips, bones saved if making stock

4 plump Toulouse sausages, cut into large chunks

2 x 400g (14oz) tins haricot beans in water, drained

2 x 400g (14oz) tins cannellini beans in water, drained

4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

2 rashers of streaky bacon, diced

500–750ml (18fl oz–1¼ pints) hot chicken stock or pork stock

salt and freshly ground black pepper

crusty baguettes, to serve