THE KEY IS IN THE PREPARATION!!

[DSM16428]

The last day of the PA late foose season left me with five birds and a hankering for some goose meat. I chose to prepare the ten filleted breasts and thigh meat as BBQ "pulled pork style" goose. The big thing with just about any waterfowl is how it's prepared prior to cooking and then of course how you actually cook it. After THOUROUGHLY rinsing and removing any feathers, I soaked the meat in ice cold salt water for about 2 hours, moving them around every so often. I then rinsed them and soaked in clean ice cold water for about another hour. I repeated this process twice, taking care to completely rinse all the pieces of meat thouroughly between each soak. After the soak process's were completed (about 8 hours total), I then cleaned and trimmed all the fat, silver skin, and connective tissues from the meat, paying special attention to any pellt holes and clots, cutting out any bruised sections and removing any feathers that were pulled through the meat by the pellets. The clean meat was then dried with paper towels and dusted fairly heavilly with dry rub BBQ seasoning. I cut lengthwise slits in the meat to help the rub penetrate the meat and all the pieces were then bagged in 1 galon zip top storage bags, placed in a large bowl to catch any leaks and stored overnight on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. My rub of choice is either Webers Grill Mates or since that has become so hard to find, I used McCormick's BBQ rub. The next morning after about a 12 hour marinade, I diced one medium onion and about 4 cloves of garlic and lightly saute'd them in olive oil and set them off to the side. In a large fry pan I browned 6 half pieces of thick cut bacon and then lightly browned the goose pices in the rendered fat from the bacon. The goose pieces were then tranfered to a large casserole dish, and covered with the onion/garlic mix. I layed the pieces of bacon over each breast half and then poured 1/2 bottle of decent beer into the bottom of the casserole dish. The breasts were then baked for 40 minutes at 350 degrees uncovered and then they were covered with foil and SLOW COOKED at 225 degrees the rest of the day (about 8 hours). I used Sweet Baby Rays original as the base for the sauce then and added the other half of a new beer (drank the other one by now ), a shot of worchestershire and a good shot of French's hot sauce for zing. This mixture was then heated to combine the flavors and set aside to cool. I removed the goose from the casserole dish and allowed it to cool a bit before donning clean rubber gloves and just mushing each breast up into a bowl. I find that the texture of the meat is preserved this way and it doesn't get all mushy as when using a spoon or fork. After all the meat was broken up, I added the sauce and the strained onions and garlic left over from the cooking process to the meat, adding sauce little by little until just moisted. It is suprising how much sauce the meat will re-absorb if left to cool before being broken up! That's it! Reheat the whole mixture in the casserole dish (drained of the cooking mixture as it can still be a bit irony tasting) and serve on a kaizer roll. EVERYONE who tasted it today thought they were eating BBQ'd beef. Enjoy!

[bubbasblazer]

Sounds like all the work was worth the wait. I see you mentioned resoaking the meat in fresh water, does this remove the saltyness from the meat. I cooked duck today and have tried soakong in salt and not doing anything other that rinsing and freezing but sometimes the meat still tastes salt I dont recall if I soaked the meat I cooked today, any ideas on removing the salyness?

[speckcaller]

that sounds like waaaaayyy too much work...

[tornadochaser]

Sounds like a great recipe, but from my experience, you can cut some corners and still get great tasting meat.

Instead of stirring, rinsing, soaking etc. your meat, simply place the meat in a large container, fill with cold water, and add 1-2 table spoons of salt depending on how shot up they are. stir it up and let soak for 24 hours. you will find that the blood is drawn out and rests on the bottom of the pan. now, depending on how old or shot up the birds are, I will do this 1-2 days, changing the water 1 time per day. I've never noticed a difference in meat flavor or consistency by changing the water more often.

Marinade and season as desired. I use all sorts of different flavors depending on how i intend to cook the meat. Marinades that contain acids work the best for goose as it breaks down the tissues somewhat. a little coke or beer added to your favorite marinade will accomplish this.

If you brown your goose before slow cooking, I've found that heating olive oil, butter, or bacon fat up on high heat and then quickly searing the meat is all you need to to. You don't want to over brown the meat because it tastes best when medium rare, and by cooking too much of the outer layer of meat, you start to wreck the flavor.

To make easy pulled goose, simply quickly brown the breasts on high then place in crock pot. cook on low till the meat forks apart, then drain the crock, shred the meat, add your desired final seasoning and bbq sauce, and cook on low for another hour or so. It is during this last hour that I add diced onion and Jalepenos. I don't like to over cook the onions, I like them to have a somewhat crunchy texture.

In reality, the only wrong way to cook waterfowl, regardless of recipe, is to cook it past an internal temp of 140-150 degrees. anything more and it tastes like cardboard. Too many overcook their birds and that is the biggest reason people hate the taste of duck or goose. They just didn't realize how to properly cook the meat.

[DSM16428]

that sounds like waaaaayyy too much work...

It is worth the prep time in the end though! Thing is, when you have 8...or more geese worth of breast and thigh meat you wana do it all assembly line style. People don't realize how much meat you actually have from that many birds...enough for a large party and while my first post was alot to read for some I'm sure, it's nothng more than a step-by-step. I didn't use a crock pot because I simply had waaaay too much meat and believe me I used every available bit of oven space. If I had less sheer poundage I would definetly have gone with the crock pot. I scrubbed and disinfected the sink to use for the soaks because there was just too much meat to go in the fridge. I used canning salt I had laying around as regular table salt simply won't disolve in ice cold water and soaked the mean in pretty salty water for a couple hours at a time between clean water soaks. Total prep time was only about 8 hours of soaking and trimming the meat. After that I just coated in BBQ rub and threw em in the refrigerator and forgot about them for about 12 or 16 hours. I don't see the point of soaking meat for long periods of time unless you want to brine the meat. I use very salty water with clean rinse/soaks in between for two reasons...one, it's faster at drawing out blood than long soaks in mildly salty water, so you don't have to worry about brining the meat and two, very salty water inhibits bactereal growth and just makes for safer meat handling all together.

[archeryrob]

Over the years I found this works for me. I clean birds and into a bucket. Many and it's a 5 gallon in the basement fridge with salt in the water. Next day change the water and change the water three times over 4 or 5 days. Then drain, seal and freeze. When thawing out I was amazed how much blood came out still. Most of the gamey taste is the blood and it ruins it for most people. Thr freezing also made the meat feel much drier when cutting for jerky and it sucked up the marinade better. Fresh meat did not take the sauce well and the family complained. The prep work does make a better meal.

I had Mennonite farmers that would not eat geese until I told them how. After thawing, throw in crock pot, cover with water, milk or cheap apple juice (best option) the concentrate type in cans. Cook 8 hours or more and pour off the liquid. This gets rid of all the blood. Then pull, shred and add BBQ sauce. get some rolls and yum! This si the best way for people not used to gamey wild meats and goose can be one of the strongest I have had.