The trick with these hodgepodge dishes is to identify each component, cook each one for dinner for each day of the week and save the leftovers to make your final dish at the end.
You could have had:
Pork and beans, Roast pork, Sausage cakes, and Braised lamb monday through thursday and turned all those leftovers into the cassoulet on friday.

"i feel that could use a little more butter" that's such a julia thing to say

As a French person, I have to admit that initially I was like "Oh, cassoulet is not that hard to make, surely this person is exaggerating." But then I heard "the recipe makes no attempt to cut corners," and I understood immediately how much of a nightmare this was going to be lol

Just a reminder, Jamie-- we don't just watch your newest videos. We go back over the years. I've learned so much from you teaching yourself how to cook.  Thank you for sharing your adventures.

Normally when I'm watching a cooking show, it's pre-planned and organized ahead of time. Instead, this is what it looks like when I cook. 10/10

I can't explain how a man cooking on the verge of a nervous meltdown  is so hilarious to watch, but it is.  Thank you, Jaime, for sacrificing your sanity to preserve ours.

As a french person who regularly cooks Cassoulet, I applaud your performance because there's no way in hell you'll get me to follow all those steps

The sheer chaos in that kitchen makes me feel so seen

My French grandmother basically just cooked the meats veg and beans separately then threw them together into the oven. The bread crumb topping was only added at the end.She would be horrified to see how complicated Julia's recipe was.French peasants didn't have that much time!

My brother is 17 years older than I am. Cooking food was our thing. We'd have whole theme days. I went down and we cooked French food for 2 days, including this Cassloute. We felt like we climbed Everest! I think we ate 100,000 calories that day. My brother passed away in December or cancer. This will be my favorite memory of him I will treasure thoroughly in my life. :)

I think the hardest part of dealing with Julia's recipes is really absorbing the context. A lot of them are ridiculously difficult taken altogether, but they become much easier in the context of a French family kitchen, where a lot of the odd ingredients are already prepped. This cassoulet is a great example: it's a way to use leftover meat up and stretch it a bit at the same time. So, if you've already got some sausage, braised lamb, and roast pork lying around from previous meals, it suddenly becomes much easier, especially if you're a poor country cook who probably always has some beans soaking to use the next day. It's probably normal to leave the pork skin in, too, for some extra protein. (If you don't want to deal with removing it, cutting it smaller so you don't get the texture in the final dish is probably easier than cutting it bigger to remove it... Although, while it may have been obvious when the beans were done, you probably wouldn't notice it in the finished cassoulet.) That's also why there's so many bay leaves and bouquets garnis: you actually made three dishes just to prep for the final dish. And it's where the regional arguments about what goes into a "real" cassoulet come from: different regions have different leftovers to deal with.

Of course, Julia is always a fan of saving duck fat for all your browning, so that turned out to be a lucky break.

I know I'm making it sound simple, but I don't mean to demean the effort you put into doing this right. The first time I dove into Julia Child's book, I figured the veal liver looked like the easiest recipe in the book, and I ended up with a full sink and a barely-edible dinner after four hours of work, so the fact that you managed a decent cassoulet on the first attempt is honestly amazing.

Me and my husband made this for our anniversary this year. Took us 14 hours. Highly recommend making over a couple of days. No harm in letting your meat rest in the  fridge. Save all cooking liquids in all steps, you will need them to keep it most for the end. Literally the most delicious thing you will ever eat. Remember that this was originally a "what to do with leftovers" dish for medieval French peasants. Whatever the nobility didn't eat at their formal meal was combined into a dish to feed the household staff and then the poor.

This is the most realistic cooking video I’ve ever seen. Especially the confusion and emotional distress. I relate to this deeply.

What I love about Jamie is that he spills stuff, dirties up way more pots and pans than necessary, cuts himself, burns himself, buys the wrong ingredients, and is basically all of us staring at Julia's cookbook like a clueless deer in the woods. And at the end, his kitchen is a hot mess unlike what we see on tv cooking shows. Like, yeah, that recipe is dope but you're going to pay, not just in groceries.

julia single-handedly carrying the bay leaf industry

My husband got me the set of her two cookbooks 2 years ago. I have not used them. I have 4 kids 7 and under and he wants to know why I haven't made any dishes. My brain almost explodes when I look through the books and see the instructions. Thanks for this video! I'm very impressed.

Imagine serving that to your family after you were in the kitchen for 10 hours and your kids and spouse would just go "meh"! 😂

Many years ago, my husband decided to make me a chocolate cake for my birthday using a Julia Child recipe. It turned out beautifully… after 9 hours of the most meticulous directions ever. He was exhausted. Needless to say, he never attempted another Julia Child cake recipe. 😆

I usually reduce the anxiety level by drinking a glass or two of wine while cooking....  Honestly with a recipe like this I would've been drunk by the end of it.

I grew up watching Julia Child as a kid in the 80s. In high-school I made this, and you're right, it was helluva task. Took me 16 hours. I ended cooking it overnight, my mom woke up the next morning and took over the basting so I could sleep. It was good, but definitely not worth 16 hours of work.