Goose in Denver

Look, there isn’t much good to say about Occupation. One of its small, accidental benefits, though, has been the rebirth of regional food. Since we’re all poor we have to eat what we can get nearby or grow with the water we can afford, and what runs wild or grows well in Arizona isn’t the same as in Idaho.

Back home in Missoula we have lots of wilderness around us still, plenty of rangeland and game, so we’ve stuck mostly to venison when we can’t have beef. I imagine there’s beef and venison both somewhere in Denver. But when I went to the hunter’s market, on the floor of the old Colorado Convention Center, all anyone was selling was snow goose. (And pigeon, of course, which you can get anywhere but which is always nasty. The mind and tongue revolt.) One of the hunters told me that this time of year, when the geese are on their way down from Canada, all the grain crops in Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas are ripe.

“Geese everywhere,” he said. “Don’t even have to aim to hit them.”

Although in truth, he said, there are fewer geese than there used to be, and more hunters, because it’s relatively easy money. Hunters pack up the beds of their pickups with those cheap styrofoam coolers and drive to the nearest corporate farm, which has spent the whole year illegally buying up hunting licenses so the hunters can shoot as much as they want.

Goose is a lot more edible than pigeon, but if you’ve never had it, there are some things you should know. The biggest is that these are large, strong birds shot as adults at the end of migration. There’s not much fat on them, so the softness and flavor has to from the sinew, and melting sinew means long cooking with slow heat. It’s a delicate balance: cook a goose too little and it’ll stay tough, too much and it’ll be gamy. The only chance you have of getting it right is if all the meat cooks evenly—roast a goose like a turkey and the outside will be gamy, the inside stringy.

I collected some tips from those Denver convention center hunters on how to do it right.

First, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll have to clean the thing. When you get it home, make a fire outside and boil a big pot of water. You want to do the cleaning outside because it’s messy, but have a garbage bag ready so the guts don’t rot up the yard. Dip the whole carcass into the water for about ten or fifteen seconds, which should loosen the feathers enough to be pluckable. If not, dip it again. Pluck the bird. Don't worry if a discharge comes out of the pores of the larger feathers; that's normal.

Use a freshly sharpened, strong knife to cut the neck between the bottom vertebrae, and remove the lower legs by twisting the joints and wedging the knife into them to cut the tendons. Put the goose on its back and cut a slit about an inch above the vent. This may take a couple of strokes. Then reach inside as far as you can and pull out the innards. The pressure may force whatever's inside out the anus, which is gross but okay; the goal is to get the intestines out without breaking them open and spilling that stuff inside the bird. You'll have to reach in a second time to get up around the gullet (a red and purple flattened ball) and a third time for the lungs, liver, and heart.

Since they have no teeth, geese swallow pebbles to grind up the grass they eat. Slice open the gullet and turn it inside out to get rid of these, wash it out, and peel off the tough, yellow inner membrane. The gullet, heart, and liver go into ice water.

On the tail of the goose is a nub of flesh supported by a bone. This is a gland that must be removed or the rest of the meat will taste terrible. Do this by cutting a 'V' shape, beginning a half-inch above it and coming down to the tip.

Wash out the bird's insides with lots of water and you're ready to cook.

Put the drumsticks and hindquarters aside for jerky or sausage, or in my case chili. My specific chili recipe is a secret, but I will say that it includes both sauteed chili peppers and roasted ones—kind of a chipotle base—and that to adjust for the low fat content of a goose at the end of its migration you’ll have to add extra tomatoes to your own recipe, and maybe a can of beer.

Take the breasts, butterfly them, pound them with a mallet, and soak them overnight in the refrigerator in a pickling salt solution. (To fully saturate the water heat it before dissolving the salt, but make sure to let it cool to room temperature before adding the meat.) Or you could tenderize the breasts by marinating them overnight in an acidic sauce, like this basic barbecue:

1 c. ketchup

12 oz. Coke (not diet)

½ tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. minced garlic

After that, you can go a couple of different ways. You can sear the breasts in an iron skillet, cover them with mushroom soup, and simmer them very low for about six hours. Or you can cut them into pieces, put them in a slow cooker with some onions, celery, carrot peels, and herbs, cover the lot with water, and leave that on low heat for about as long.

Or you could try clay-baking. Fold the pounded, marinated breasts around a paste made of herbs, chopped onions, bread crumbs, and a lot of fresh mushrooms, all stuck together with olio (butter if you can get it). They should look like meat empanadas. Paint the outside with more olio and wrap them in foil.

Make the dough for the baker’s clay from

4 c. flour

1 c. salt

1½ c. water.

Roll it a quarter inch thick, and then wrap that sheet of dough around the foil. Use a little water on your hands to smooth out the cracks and seams.

These can now either be baked in the oven (two hours at 400) or buried in dying coals and left for however long it takes. When it’s all done you’ll need to break off the baking clay with a hammer. Try not to be too aggro or you’ll ruin the food inside.