Goose for Christmas

Our traditional meal for Christmas day centers around roasted goose. One 10-11 pound goose is enough to feed four to six people. I carve it into 8 pieces - legs, thighs, and each half of the breast cut into two pieces. There are a couple bonuses with roasted goose - making a rich goose stock with the bones, and using leftover goose meat on salads. But first, here's how I roast a goose, based on the recipe in Barbara Kafka's cookbook on roasting.

Make sure the goose is thawed completely. If there are any pin-feathers left in the skin (there usually are some) then remove them with a tweezer or small pliers. Remove all the excess fat and skin. Rinse & dry it, season with salt & pepper in the cavity and on the outside. Roast at 475 degrees for an hour, removing the excess fat at 30 minutes and at the end of the hour. There will be a lot of fat - be careful because it's hot and can splatter. After the first hour, turn off the oven, leave the oven door closed, and let the goose continue to cook for another hour. The oven temperature will slowly decrease to around 200 degrees or so. Total roasting time is about two hours.

Remove the goose to a platter and deglaze the pan with stock, wine or a mixture of the two. Boil it down and, if you want, thicken it with a bit of butter and add some fresh herbs. Serve this sauce along with the goose, or save it for making goose stock later.

I always make goose stock with the leftover bones. The goose neck, gizzard, heart and wing-tips get browned in a saucepan and simmered in water while the goose roasts, and then added to the stock pot. Remove the loose skin from the bones, salvage whatever meat is left on the bones, and break the bones into smaller pieces to fit into a large stock pot. If there's anything left in the roasting pan (leftover glazing liquid, brown bits, etc) make sure to get that in the stock pot too. Cover it all with water, bring to a boil and then simmer, covered for three hours or so. This makes a rich, brown stock - I usually get about 20 cups. Once it is strained and cooled, I'll put it into 4-cup containers and freeze it for use later.

The leftover and salvaged goose meat is great on salads. This year we had it on spinach salad, with bleu cheese crumbles, diced dried figs, and chopped almonds.

Kafka's recipe calls for saving, straining and clarifying the goose fat so that it can be used later in frying things. I'm not big on frying, so I usually don't keep the goose fat. If you want my goose fat, come on by.

As for wines to go with roast goose - definitely red wine. There is no white meat on a goose, it's all dark and rich.

Comments

[Talmida]

I have my turkey stock simmering as I type.
:)
I've never roasted a goose and your comment "remove all the excess fat and skin" caught my eye. Is there excess skin? or do you remove parts of the skin (and underlying fat) for roasting? I'm only familiar with wild goose, is yours domestic?

[Steve Bogner]

Hi Talmida -

This recipe is for a domestic goose. The ones I get usually have the neck removed, but the neck skin still attached to the body. So, I cut off that neck-skin. There's always a chunk or two of fat in the cavity, and a bit on the breast. But I don't mess around with trying to get the fat out from under the breast skin - it will all cook away anyway.

[Jim]

Have never, to my memory, eaten goose. Somewhere back there the wife cooked duck for me one year, but ever since it's turkey and ham, turkey and ham. I was drooling just reading your recipe............