Got the goose cooked. It tuned out gorgeous to look at and delicious to eat.
But, oh my goodness, so much fat! I've got to cut back on how much I feed. I am going to try making sweet potato fries using my duck fry recipe and yams and goose fat.
I inserted slivers of fresh garlic under the skin and roasted at 300 degrees, in order to render the fat out. Goose was placed on the rack breast side down. Most of the garlic fell out, so next time, goose goes upside down with the skin well pierced, but all the garlic is going into the body cavity.
Goose was turned over for the last hour and temperature increased to 350, mostly because I put dressing, yams, and brandied apples into the oven at that time.
The meat is reminiscent of duck. Texture is quite nice. It's firm, yet tender to chew. More like quality beef steak than poultry, except it tastes like poultry and doesn't taste anything like beef. All the meat is dark and it is very rich. There's not a huge amount of meat on an 11 1/2 pound goose. It's nothing like carving a turkey.
Cooks notes: you need a roasting rack that gets the bird well off the bottom of the pan. When I flipped the bird over, I simply moved it to a different roasting pan instead of trying to drain the fat out of the original pan. I set the original pan off to the side for the fat to cool and then I put it into small freezer containers to store in the freezer. Fat is very rich, but doesn't seem greasy, so I am looking forward to learning how to cook with it.
Bird was butchered at 24 weeks. Meat was lovely butchered at that age. I will butcher earlier next year because I don't think the additional growth was worth the extra feed cost. But there was no problem with the age of the geese being too old for a roaster.
But, oh my goodness, so much fat! I've got to cut back on how much I feed. I am going to try making sweet potato fries using my duck fry recipe and yams and goose fat.
I inserted slivers of fresh garlic under the skin and roasted at 300 degrees, in order to render the fat out. Goose was placed on the rack breast side down. Most of the garlic fell out, so next time, goose goes upside down with the skin well pierced, but all the garlic is going into the body cavity.
Goose was turned over for the last hour and temperature increased to 350, mostly because I put dressing, yams, and brandied apples into the oven at that time.
The meat is reminiscent of duck. Texture is quite nice. It's firm, yet tender to chew. More like quality beef steak than poultry, except it tastes like poultry and doesn't taste anything like beef. All the meat is dark and it is very rich. There's not a huge amount of meat on an 11 1/2 pound goose. It's nothing like carving a turkey.
Cooks notes: you need a roasting rack that gets the bird well off the bottom of the pan. When I flipped the bird over, I simply moved it to a different roasting pan instead of trying to drain the fat out of the original pan. I set the original pan off to the side for the fat to cool and then I put it into small freezer containers to store in the freezer. Fat is very rich, but doesn't seem greasy, so I am looking forward to learning how to cook with it.
Bird was butchered at 24 weeks. Meat was lovely butchered at that age. I will butcher earlier next year because I don't think the additional growth was worth the extra feed cost. But there was no problem with the age of the geese being too old for a roaster.
