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Roast Goose with Potato Stuffing
1 goose (about 8 pounds) Potato stuffing Salt pork if goose is not fat Salt and pepper Flour Select a goose that is about four months old; an old goose is better braized than roasted. Singe the goose, wash it carefully in hot water, and wipe it dry before drawing it. Flatten the breast-bone by striking it with a rolling-pin. Partly fill the goose with potato stuffing, stitch up the openings and truss it. If it is not fat, lay thin slices of pork upon the breast, but if the goose has considerable fat, omit the pork. Bake in a hot oven (400-480 degrees F.) for forty-five minutes, remove it from the oven, pour out all the fat, sprinkle the bird all over with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and return it to the oven.
When the flour is a good brown, pour one cup of hot water into the pan and baste the goose often, dredging it each time with a slight sifting of flour to absorb the fat. Allow eighteen minutes to the pound for a young goose and twenty-five for one that is old. Remove the goose from the pan, add a cup of hot water to the gravy and thicken it, if necessary, with browned hour. Garnish the goose with parsley and serve with giblet gravy. Apple sauce is often served with roast goose.
Goslings may be roasted in the same way, allowing, however, only fifteen minutes to the pound for cooking.
A straightforward roast built around fat management: the first blast of heat renders the goose, the fat is poured off, and repeated flour dredging keeps the skin from stewing in grease. Everything else follows from that.
- The hinge: pour off the fatThe forty-five minute start at high heat exists to render fat, and it must actually be poured out of the pan before the bird goes back. An 8-pound goose can give up two to three cups. Left in the pan it will smoke, and it will spatter dangerously when the cup of water is added.
- Oven heat"Hot oven (400-480 degrees F.)" reflects a range-thermometer of loose accuracy. Take the first stretch at 425F, then drop to 325-350F for the long roasting; at a sustained 450F an 8-pound goose will scorch well before the thighs are done.
- Time versus temperatureEighteen minutes to the pound gives about two and a half hours for an 8-pound bird, which is in the right neighbourhood, but judge by a thermometer: 165F in the thickest part of the thigh, away from bone. Goose legs benefit from a few degrees more; the breast should not go far past 165F.
- Stuffing in the cavityThe instruction to "partly fill" is sound, and worth respecting. Pack it loosely and check that the centre of the stuffing itself reaches 165F, since it sits in rendered fat and juices. Baking the potato stuffing in a separate dish is the more reliable route.
- Drawing and singeing"Before drawing it" means before removing the entrails, and singeing burned off the fine hairs over a flame. Any goose bought today is drawn and largely clean; pull remaining pinfeathers with tweezers or pliers.
- BraizedA variant spelling of braised. The advice holds: a mature goose is tough and best cooked slowly in liquid rather than roasted.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a slow oven until nut-coloured, kept on hand in period kitchens for darkening gravies. Plain flour cooked briefly in a spoonful of the goose fat does the same job.
- Salt porkBarding with pork is only for a lean bird, and almost no goose sold now needs it. If yours is genuinely thin, unsmoked salt pork or fatback, thinly sliced, is the equivalent.
- Yield and the fatAn 8-pound goose is bony and serves four to six. Strain and refrigerate the poured-off fat; it keeps for months and is the best possible medium for roast potatoes.