Canada geese get a bad rap. We all know this goose. It’s the one that chokes our parks, wanders around our neighborhoods and leaves great cylindrical snakes o’crap all over the place. Sky carp. Flying rats, Stinking, arrogant hissing birds that frighten children.
Yeah, Canadas can be all of these things. But in the right circumstances they can be wonderful at the table, in many ways better even than either a domestic goose or a wild specklebelly goose, which is known to those of us who hunt them as “the ribeye of the sky.”
I managed to return from my sojourn to Manitoba with five Canada geese, and since then I’ve been busy trying to elevate what most people view as barely a step above vermin.
I should start by noting that there are Canada geese and there are Canada geese; incidentally, it is most definitely not a “Canadian goose.” That drives me nuts. The geese I shot happened to be Canadian because I killed them in Manitoba. But the species is correctly known as “Canada goose.” Got it? Good.
As I was saying, there are all sorts of geese that look like Canadas, from tiny Aleutian geese no larger than a mallard, to the Giant Canadas, which can reportedly top 20Â pounds. That, my friends, is one big-ass sky carp. The geese I shot were a mix of cacklers, which are only about 3 to 4 pounds, lesser Canada geese, which are about 5 to 7 pounds, and one big Western Canada, which weighed nearly 13 pounds. That was a monster.
Canada geese live lives like large mallards, which is why you see them sharing the same park ponds. Both birds will eat just about anything, but geese really dig grass, and yes, grain. How a Canada tastes depends on what that bird ate before you shot it. And because they are such eclectic eaters, it matters.
My geese had been gorging on barley, so I knew they’d be fine. Not sure I’d eat a Canada out of Central Park in Manhattan, though, unless I were, really hungry. But who knows? Maybe it’d taste like knishes, hot dog buns and hard pretzels?
When it comes to cleaning these birds, lots of people get turned off. This is understandable: Once you start talking about an animal 12 pounds or larger, everything gets harder to deal with.
I highly recommend aging your geese, in the feathers, with the guts in, for 1 to 3 days. I wrote a tutorial about hanging game birds that goes into details. Big geese can be tough — they can live more than 20 years even in the wild. Aging develops flavor and tenderizes the meat.
The feathers on a large Canada are tough to remove, and waxing one takes two full blocks of paraffin. God help you if you try to dry-pluck one. Once you get to the gutting, I often hear people say, “Christ it stank! Was so bad I tossed the bird.”
That’s a crying shame, because the stink is, in most cases, just the fact that the ass end of a Canada goose is so large the sheer mass of crap makes the whole thing smelly — until you remove it and wash the cavity. You’ve seen a goose crap on the grass, right? Can you even remember seeing duck crap? Waaay smaller. Shit happens. It’s an occupational hazard when you deal with larger animals.
I should have taken a picture of my big Canada goose, all plucked and cleaned and gutted. It was so big I could have stuffed it with one of the smaller geese. And then a duck in the small goose, then a quail in the duck, a snipe in the quail… but I digress.
There are no picture because I broke it down. (Here’s how to break down a game bird) Sorry. As pretty as cooking a whole goose is, I generally don’t recommend it. Goose and duck breasts need to be cooked medium to rare, and the thighs need to be well done. Very hard to do this on a whole bird.
So, armed with all kinds of random goose parts in my fridge, what to do with them? I have a whole ton of duck and goose recipes already on the site, so every new season I try to refine old recipes and then attempt to stretch myself a bit with new recipes.
Yeah, that’s a goose neck. Specifically, it’s the neck from the big Canada goose. I stuffed it with ground goose meat and spices, tied it off at either end, and roasted it a la ficelle, so it would be evenly browned. (Here is how to make sausages using a bird’s neck as the casing.)
I’ve stuffed goose necks many times before, but the new bit was roasting the neck a la ficelle, a cooking technique dating back to the 1500s in which you suspend meat over or next to a heat source. The ficelle is the string, and if you have meat hanging next to a fire, and not in an oven as I did, you twist the string so the meat rotates — it’s a ghetto rotisserie. The result is very even browning.
Pretty, eh? I love these sausages, and they are always a conversation piece. One word of advice: Try your damnedest to get every last bit of feather off the neck, even when using domestic goose necks. The feathers won’t hurt anyone, but they are pretty gnarly to look at if you’re serving people unused to eating sausages made with bird’s necks…
Canada geese are ideal for these sausages, because they have unusually long necks, even compared to other geese. The longer the neck, the longer the sausage. And yes, size does matter.
Canadas are also ideal for charcuterie in general, because they are just so damn big. You can confit the legs and thighs easily, and you get plenty of meat from even one leg. The breasts are so large, sometimes well over a pound per side, that they provide lots of easy-to-grind meat for sausages and salami. The only problem is that, in general, you cannot use all that lovely goose or duck fat in charcuterie because it is too unsaturated; it will melt in a warm room.
But I found a way around that: Goose mortadella.
Mortadella is what American baloney wishes it could be. It is an Italian emulsified sausage often seen with pistachios embedded in it. Now you charcuterie experts out there will no doubt see I have too many air bubbles in my mortadella, and that it has recognizable bits of spice in it, neither of which are ideal in a commercial mortadella. But it was my first try, and it tasted damn good.
I’ve read many mortadella recipes, the best being Chef Paul Bertolli’s in his masterful book Cooking by Hand. But Bertolli’s doesn’t deal with duck fat. I found instead a mortadella recipe by Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli in the magazine Art Culinaire that does use duck fat — and what d’ya know, it will emulsify along with everything else! Problem solved. So I combined Bertolli’s and Guarnaschelli’s recipes to make my own recipe for goose mortadella.
It’s damn good, like, don’t-want-to-stop-eating-it good.
The last thing I made with the Canadas was something deceptively simple: Seared goose breasts with poached pears from my backyard tree. That’s the image at the top of this post.
Searing a duck or goose breast is one of my favorite ways to cook that bit of the bird, and I find that wild game always marries well with fruits. A year ago I made a similar dish called Ducks in the Orchard, which uses apples, and this year I wanted to refine and simplify it even further.
I salted the goose breasts a full hour before I cooked them, to get a quick cure going. My pears are Bartletts, and they can be pretty hard, so I decided to treat them like a vegetable. I sliced them into wedges — do this the same way you would cut supremes off an orange — coated them with olive oil and salt, then vacuum-sealed them.
Into my handy-dandy sous vide machine they went, at 140°F for 1 hour. They came out still firm, but soft enough to easily cut with a fork — sweet, salty, rich. (If you don’t have a sous vide machine, and you probably don’t, use a big kettle of water and a thermometer.)
Underneath it all is a red wine sauce, made with a little estratto. A little of that über tomato paste goes a long way. Could I have made a white wine sauce instead? You bet. Might even have been better, who knows? Next time.
What’s the takeaway? For hunters, know that there are all sorts of things you can do to cook Canada goose that you might not have thought of before; they have advantages — largely size — that let you do some things you can’t with other waterfowl. For non-hunters, who cannot legally buy Canada geese, know that a domestic goose is roughly the same size and shape as a Canada, so the recipes translate very well.
Next time you’re in a park or on a golf course, and that nasty bird starts hissing at you, think about taking along a baseball bat. Here, goosey, goosey goose…
I love to read your stuff, and rarely feel a need to comment. I would offer two points of view for you to consider. 1. A good brine, beyond salt/sugar/pepper that is thoughtfully simmered for 20 minutes, cooled and then used for a two day soak, solves most “diet” choices the animal has made. 2. A goose, when cooked to its taste profile (curry marinades, citrus-based sauces, teriyaki-based devils on horseback, and/or apple based 225 degree smokes) brings out the very best in what geese offer (i.e. don’t cook it like a chicken).
Got my first Canada goose so I now have a reason to reread ‘duck duck goose’. Thanks again great info!
Also, “The Ribeye of the Sky” is widely known by most hunters as the Sandhill Crane, not of any goose. Perhaps where you live, your local culture has adopted a different tradition. Either way, the Sandhill Crane would be an interesting waterfowl to sous vide – especially if it truly is the original Ribeye of the Sky….
Thanks for your article. It is truly wonderful.
Hank: Yep, sandhills definitely have that name. We can’t hunt them here, and I happen to think the ribeye in the sky is a better moniker for spacks because of their fat. After all, part of what makes a great ribeye is that fat!
Hank,
Can I just use my duck sous vide method for the Canada goose? Leave the skin on, slice the skin, salt both sides, and add thyme/herbs etc.. Submerge for 1-2 hours at 135F. Then sear skin side for 5 minutes and flip and sear for 1 minute. It comes out so fantastic for duck. Why 182F for 20 minutes for goose? Wouldn’t a lower temp at a longer duration work well too? I just want to be safe for cooking such a big breast meat portion of the bird.
Thanks
Steve
Steve: OK, that’s just weird. I have no idea why its says 182F in that post. Your method is correct. I’m going to go back and change it now. Thanks for the catch!
Hank,
When you are breasting out a Canada, do you pull the wishbone out like we do when roasting a whole chicken?
Walter: Nope.
In the early goose season I shot one that landed in the middle of the lake I was hunting on. We couldn’t get to it for about an hour. Do you think this is still good to eat? Since it was in the water for so long I didn’t age the meat.
Ryan: Should be fine, especially if you cooled it later.
I’ve eaten many Canada geese and only a few have been “fishy”. I find in the summer they can be as tough as a shoe (as a farmer, I have had a depredation permit in the past). However, in the fall after fattening up on local corn fields, they are very tasty. Previously I’ve breasted them, marinated a bit and then grilled them. Folks often think its flank steak! Next one is going to give up the neck and become a sausage. Thanks SO MUCH for sharing that. PS: Already put your fauna and fowl books on the Christmas list thanks to the goodness you’ve shared here.
Ok I just got back from a remote backpacking trip in the Sierra and I shot a Canada goose it wasn’t a huge one so we just harvested the breasts and pan fried them. Tasted like a used bandaid soaked in a fishy swamp. Is this due the goose’s diet or not aging it all? BTW it was head shot with a .22 and then allowed to bleed out.
John: Um… you said you shot a Canada goose in July? That’s a federal crime.
Does the shot not cause issues when aging?
I saw the a la ficelle cooking method in action years ago at Old Sturbridge Village. A reenactor in one of the houses was roasting a whole turkey. She had a small fire going in a huge hearth, with the turkey suspended from a string over a pan. She’d twist the string every so often, and the turkey would twirl around in front of the fire. It looked really good, and very easy to do (assuming you happen to have one of those big hearths).
Wow! I stumbled upon your site while searching goose recipes. Thank you for such a resource. Very important information for those that appreciate the earth’s natural bounty. Cheers!
Re: Canada neck cleanup
I tried, I tried a lot! but I gave up – do you have a special technique to cleanup the necks ? the necks has tiny, little feathers, and they seem to be impossible to pluck dry, did you share your technique on the neck plucking ?
Well, cleaning 2 took me like 2+ hours. They were the 18lbs kind, HUGE.
https://picasaweb.google.com/102567527316483554268/201211090NakedCanadaGoose?authkey=Gv1sRgCIr8gda7v9SGwgE
I just smoked one and I felt it was a bit tough, I did not age them at all and I have the feeling it was a mistake not too since I did marinade them for almost 5 days!
I am glad I found our site, keep up the good work and Merry Christmas!
Dry plucking is really not all of that bad if you can stand the down up your nose. When we do it, we remove the feathers first then go for the down. We once made the mistake of using the wife’s fan to suck the floating down out of the garage…big mistake, plucking the fan was worse than plucking the goose. Once the down is off we used a propane torch to make for a perfect skin.
Hank,
I can’t agree with you about hanging geese just three days. I hunt on the Eastern shore of Maryland and we kill a few geese. I hang all of my geese for a week, then I breast them out and keep them in the fridge for another 3, 4 days or a week before freezing them. I have never had a bad goose breast. I marinate them in salad dressing or sprinkle them with Montreal Steak seasoning and grill them. I try not to get much past medium rare so as if I want to reheat the leftovers in the microwave, they aren’t over cooked. I enjoy just slicing a piece of cold goose breast off and eating it cold.
Stir fried goose breast in soy or Worchester sauce is great too.
I am preparing at this minute to make a goose soup…that is why I am here. Problem is finding a goose stock. In the past, and probably today, I use Mrs. Grass soup mix with a beef stock…comes out pretty good.
Any ideas for the goose stock?
Minna: Well, my first thought is why did you hang it for 6 days? I never do that with waterfowl. Pheasants, maybe, but not geese or ducks. The gaminess and funk is almost certainly due to the long hang time. Don’t hang geese more than a day or so unless you enjoy that flavor. I do, for what it’s worth.
As for cooking, please don’t try to roast it whole. You will be disappointed. Break it down and slow cook the legs and wings and pan roasted the breast to medium-rare.
I was given my first goose last week… I grew up on a farm and know how to slaughter and hang, but I’m not sure what the goose meat should smell like when all done. (My mom hates waterfowl, I hadn’t even had duck till I was in college). We hung our Canada goose for 6 days and when we broke it down, my poor husband was retching and puking most of the way through. After breaking it down yesterday I washed and refrigerated it since I was planning on cooking it today, but it still has a funky smell to me… So I am wondering if it is just the gaminess and its normal, or I hung it too long and it needs to be tossed? Any thoughts?
Jimi: I don’t recommend cooking a goose on a rotisserie. They’re pretty big, and unless you have a very sturdy rotisserie, the weight of the goose will mess it up. Besides, goose breast is best served medium-rare, while the legs are best slow-cooked.
Awesome post. I have just gone goose hunting for the first time in 8 years. Great day came home with 4 Canada geese. One weighing in at 17 lbs. Now I must try making 4 neck sausages.
One question, Is it a good method to cook a whole Canada goose on a rotisserie? I know you can roast them and it works well.
Thanks for the great recipes
My husband has several ‘canada’ geese in the freezer and was tole that a cure will make wild goose more tender – specirfically Sure Cure. Found the product but unfortunately no instructions included. Can you tell me how to cure a wild goose breast?
The article is great timing Hank. I just went to Rochester, MN where the largest flock of Branta Canadensis Maxima (Giant Canada) is located in North America. I shot one that was close to 16 pounds. Wow…..did that goose made a thud when it hit the ground! I have 8 legs that I am going to sous vide this weekend.
For sous vide I use a crock pot hooked to a thermostat. I put the probe right into the water. Ghetto fo’ sho’, but it works!
I’ve cleaned a lot of Canada Geese and they smell from the moment you open the skin. Usually we just breast them out, rather than going through the arduous process of plucking or waxing them, though after reading this I may have to try stuffing a goose neck.
And for the record, I wouldn’t eat anything found living in Central Park. Now the pretzels and dirty water hot dogs…that’s another story.
Hi!!! I recently found your blog and I’ve gotta tell you I just LOVE IT!!! and this kind of posts are so useful, please keep them going. Btw thank’s for the sausage idea, I must try this.
Thank you! Thank you! For setting the world straight on the wrong-ness of calling them “canadian” geese. That irks me so much I can’t stand it! Unfortunately, I’ll bet that most people coming to your site (and reading your glorious writing) already know that they are “canada geese.” Wish you could reach the whole rest of the world, too.
LoL. A baseball bat? Hank, you have a morbid sense of humor.
As for Central Park geese, I once heard (it could be urban legend) that one mayor of New York proposed a recipe pamphlet to help New Yorkers help themselves in ridding the city of its pigeon and rat infestations. I suppose if city-fed rat (both flying and crawling) could be on a menu, a goose can’t be too far behind.
I was curious though, is it safe to eat aged meat rare, even if you aged in a semi-cold environment? Isn’t there a concern from bacterial buildup, especially if you age for 3 days or longer? I read your post on hanging pheasants, but I don’t believe you mentioned eating anything rare.
Lastly, I understood your explaination of the name, but it’s going to be hard for me not to call them Canadian goose/geese. It’s like saying Germany Sheperd or Tasmania Devil (Netherland apple pie anyone?). You just want to turn it into an adjective so badly. Hell, I’ll probably still do it, improper though it may be. I’ll just try to refrain on your site. 🙂
E. Nassar: I have the sous vide supreme, which is my new favorite toy. The Polyscience one is better but twice as expensive.
Karen: I thought I heard something coming from inside the oven when I was cooking that sausage… 😉
Heather: I’ll have to make some for you next time I come up to Portland!
Got something against Canadians – geese or otherwise? Although it’s a stretch, we don’t go calling Californians or Alaskans or New Yorkers California Humans or Alaska Humans or New York Humans… hehehehe
Look at that fancy light box light! That time of year again, innit.
I’m gurgling my own spit over the neck and mortadella. And thank you for the bitch-slap on “Canadian” goose. Drives me crazy, too.
The breasts look wonderful with the pears, but that neck sausage and mortadella are calling my name!
Hank! What a beautiful looking dish AND Sous Vide! You cannot just gloss over that part. What did you buy? Sous Vide Supreme? Or the PolyScience one?
WOW! Fantastic post! I’m excited about some of these recipes. We get the Giant Canadas down here in KY and I routinely shoot birds near the 20 lb mark. Put a lot of them in the freezer last year and plan to do more of the same this year. These will come in handy.
Brilliant idea! I can’t wait to try the neck sausage idea. That is just great. Thanks.