For Christmas countdown day 6, I decided to take the challenge of...roasting a goose! I've had roasted goose before, usually for major holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I always remembered it being absolutely delicious - like an entire bird of dark meat with an amazing layer of delectable skin. And I've heard that the high fat content in geese help keep the meat more tender, so I was excited to face this roast goose challenge!
Surprisingly, you cannot easily find geese in New York City, and I simply do not know why. Whole Foods does sell a limited number of frozen geese, but they sell them at $10/lb, which I simply was not willing to pay for this challenge! After trekking around to Citarella, Trader Joe's, Dean & Deluca, and Dickson's Farmstand Meats, I was just about ready to give up, until I magically found a goose at Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown...for about $5 per lb. I quickly scooped one up and lugged it home.
To brine the goose, I chose to take a more Asian approach and create a brine of dried star anise, soy sauce, orange juice, salt, pepper, and water. After an overnight brine, I plopped the goose onto my roasting pan, wrapped foil around the ends of the drumsticks and wings (to prevent them from burning too quickly), filled the bottom of the roasting pan with some water, and threw the bird into a 350 F oven. I then decided to take the existing brine and reduce it and use to baste the goose. But naturally the brine required some tweaking (because it was kind of bland...) so I added a little more soy sauce, a lot of brown sugar, and a little bit of honey. I then brined the goose every 20 minutes (in retrospect, probably a bad idea - I'm guessing I shouldn't have opened the oven quite so much) until the goose reached a temperature of 170 F, which for my 10 lb goose, took around 2 hrs and 45 mins.
The goose was flavorful, but not quite as good as my dad makes it...and the meat was significantly more dry. Thankfully, goose on its own has a delicious flavor (at least much more so than turkey), but I still wish I had managed to cook a slightly more moist goose. At the very least, I think a little bit of gravy could have really helped the slices of meat that had little to no skin attached...but I just really did not feel like throwing together a gravy at that point. I still think goose is a worthwhile substitute for turkey at Thanksgiving/Christmas/etc, but I do not think I will be roasting another one again - or at least not until I learn how to not overcook my poultry...
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