Bulletproof goose recipe

With the comin' of March came the quiet passin' of our goose season here in PA. Dad and Joe managed to make the best of the final day and put a few more birds in the bag. All told, the Murren family decoys accounted for 67 birds this year, which is a pretty decent year for us. My contribution was rather minimal, but I managed to bag ten or so of those birds myself. Joe, with the advantage of time and youthful exuberance, probably did the most damage, but I ain't gonna pad his ego and ask him how many.

Any of y'all that have bit into those greasy bastards knows that goose is an acquired taste. Most of our goose meat makes its way to the dehydrator for jerky for just that reason, but one of Joe's buddies shared a pretty good recipe with us that is worth sharin'. As simple as it is, it makes for some pretty damn good tablefare. I whipped up a batch for Winterfest a few weeks ago, and it seemed to go over pretty well.

Basically, all you do is slice the breast meat into 1/2"-3/4" strips and marinate it awhile in either apple juice or apple cider. When the time comes, throw it all in the crock pot on low for eight-ten hours, then take it out and shred it with a fork. Throw that on a potato roll with some Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce, and you got a winner.

That's the simple recipe that's probably pretty damn good in its own right, but I've been known to just start grabbin' shit and throwin' it in, just to see what happens.

Turns out we had a quart of apple juice that had been in the fridge too long, and it was startin' to ferment just a tad. I've heard from numerous sources that citrous helps kill off some of the gamey, greasy taste so I added a cup of lemon juice to the apple juice. I also threw in three tablespoons of brown sugar, three tablespoons of soy sauce, and two teaspoons each of nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon. Instead of the SBR's, I used a batch of scratch BBQ sauce that I lifted from a catered lunch at work a few months ago.

I also used 12 breasts (six geese), which my girl discovered was just a bit too much for our crock pot to handle. I threw it in and headed to work, and by the time she crawled outta bed a few hours later, it had apparently cooked over the edge and was all over the kitchen.That said, ten breasts were prolly more than enough for the Winterfest crowd anyway.

Shreddin' it took a good bit of time, but it was definitely worth it. I wound up eatin' a good bit of it before it even made it to Ron's. Pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

One thing I did notice is that after two straight days set on warm in the crock pot for the Winterfest activities, it started to taste like goose meat again. I wound up mixin' a bottle of BBQ sauce into it, which fixed it up right nice.

Definitely a keeper recipe, and will help us use up some of the excess goose meat we tend to pad our freezer with. Give it a try and let me know what ya think.