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Roast Green Goose
A green goose should never be more than four months old. Dress same as chicken. If strong, wash out with soapsuds and carefully rinse in several waters.
Stuff, truss, sew, flatten the breastbone, and roast the same as chicken. Allow eighteen minutes to the pound for roasting.
If the goose is more than four months old, it is better to braise than roast it. But if roasted, allow twenty-five minutes to the pound. 1
The instructions assume a bird bought whole and undressed, a coal range, and a cook who already knows the house method for roast chicken. Two things need translating: what a green goose is, and how long it actually takes.
- What a green goose isA young goose under four months, killed before it has put on heavy fat and firm muscle — usually 4 to 6 lb dressed. Supermarket geese are almost always mature birds of 8 to 12 lb, so the longer braising advice in the last lines is the one that applies to most modern shoppers.
- Skip the soapsudsWashing a strong-smelling bird in soap and rinsing it through several waters belongs to an era of slow transport and no refrigeration. Do not do it: soap residue is unpleasant and rinsing raw poultry sprays bacteria around the sink. A bird that smells strong should be discarded, not laundered.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none, deferring to its roast chicken method. Start at 425F for 20 to 30 minutes to set the skin and start the fat running, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- The timing is generousEighteen minutes to the pound on a 5 lb bird is an hour and a half, which will take a young goose well past done. Cook to temperature instead: 165F in the thickest part of the breast, 175F in the thigh, measured away from bone.
- Deal with the fatPrick the skin over the breast and thighs with a fork or skewer tip before roasting so the subcutaneous fat can escape, and pour the drawn fat off the pan two or three times during cooking. Goose fat keeps for months refrigerated and is worth saving for potatoes.
- Flattening the breastboneA period trick to make the bird sit level and carve evenly. Press down firmly on the breast with the heel of the hand until the wishbone and keel give. It is optional; trussing the legs and tucking the wings achieves most of the same effect.
- StuffingIf you stuff the cavity, the stuffing must also reach 165F, which usually means overcooking the breast. Roasting the dressing separately in a dish with a ladle of goose fat is the more reliable route; a quartered apple and onion in the cavity for aroma costs nothing.
- Braising an older birdThe book is right that a mature goose is better braised. Brown it, then cook covered with stock and aromatics at 325F until the leg meat pulls easily — roughly 2.5 to 3 hours for a 10 lb bird.
- YieldGoose carries far less meat per pound than chicken. A 5 lb green goose serves three or four; a 10 lb mature bird serves six to eight.
"Green goose" is an old English market term for a bird killed young, in late spring or early summer, before it had been fattened on stubble after the harvest. "Green" here is usually explained as meaning unripe or young, though it has also been linked to a bird fed on grass rather than grain. In the older English calendar the green goose was associated with Whitsuntide and the fat Michaelmas goose with late September, and the two were priced and cooked quite differently. The soapsud wash is a reminder that early twentieth-century American kitchens still received poultry with feathers, pinfeathers, and sometimes a strong odor from the yard or the express wagon; washing a rank bird in soapsuds or soda water does appear in period manuals, and it faded from cookbooks as refrigerated shipping and municipal inspection made a strong-smelling goose something to reject rather than repair.