Waterfowl?

Goose and duck take lots of skill to cook. If you over cook them, they are tough, and have no flavor. I have several thousand hours hunting waterfowl. I'm more of a field hunter, but I've done my share of water hunting. I prefer duck,over goose for eating.
 
KansasGsp said:
I do quite a bit of goose/duck hunting. Goose meat is just like any other wild game, if it's inedible to you it's probably because it was handled poorly or cooked wrong. I've got a couple recipes that are good plus we make a lot of jerky out of ours. You'd have a hard time telling the difference between goose jerky and deer jerky, it's good. Another thing we've down in the past is save all our meat and then at the end of the season take it to the locker and have sticks and summer sausage made. Again, not much difference in taste with it and venison.
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I lack your fine pallet. I'd also have a hard time telling the difference between a GSP turd and a Pointer turd and would consider neither "good", at least without a mountain of garlic to mask the base. Do you also relish woodcock "trail" on toast points? :)

To each his own. I love quail, grouse and pheasant in that order - not so much, goose. To my taste, with enough added herbs, spices, canned broth or soup mated with a long slow cook in the crock pot, goose can be made as tasty as as an inexpensive cut of grocery store beef. Chuck roast maybe. And that ain't bad - it just isn't anything that would make me wax poetic about it. Although I have been thinking I might try making bacon out of goose or duck - might be tasty. Not as tasty as the real deal made of actual pig I'd guess - but I do have an open mind, sometimes. When I have to.

Addendum: cold smoking goose or duck ups it's value as table fare several rungs, to my taste.
 
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Just wondering. Does anyone here find woodcock to be high grade table fare? Up front: I do not. They rate below goose in my book.
Strange, pretty little birds - but on the table, I can think only of feathered earthworms.
 
FWIW - Cabela's is (or was recently) running a great ad on a sort of combination steamer/smoker ("Orion") that looks like it might be great for cooking game meats, particularly for those among us who lack culinary skills. Kind of similar to a product used in the far east (except that one is ceramic and is buried in the earth), and maybe to the Green Egg,. but stainless steel. The turkeys I had that were prepared in that way were fall off the bone tender, with a somewhat subtle, delicate smoke flavor. It was a good combination, at least to my unrefined palette.

I ordered one and look forward to testing it on a goose or two. I'm thinking it might be good on pheasant and dove as well.
 
Checked it out at the BBQ Brethren forums to see what they had to say. Short version consensus is that it's a fast outdoor convection cooker that does poultry well but is not a good smoker for ribs/brisket/pulled pork, etc. Uses a lot of charcoal too.

Orion Cooker

Our local Ace Hardware had one of these on display today. Anyone have any hands on experience using one. An outdoor convection oven sure sounds like an interesting idea. For this amount of money it might almost be worth getting one just to play with.
www.bbq-brethren.com www.bbq-brethren.com
 
My uncle always said that there's only way to cook a goose: you put it in the oven with cow shit, cook it real slow on low temperature, and when its done you throw away the goose and eat the shit.
 
gimruis said:
My uncle always said that there's only way to cook a goose: you put it in the oven with cow shit, cook it real slow on low temperature, and when its done you throw away the goose and eat the shit.
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That is true - but only if you use enough garlic. That's the key. Otherwise, there is a grassy after taste.
 
Check out some recipes Steve Rinella has on his Meat Eater website and/or cookbooks. I'm not a big waterfowl fan (hunting or eating) but damn the way he shows how to cook duck and talks about how good it is, I think it's one of those things where it's the cook that's bad and not the piece of meat.
 
Munster927 said:
Check out some recipes Steve Rinella has on his Meat Eater website and/or cookbooks. I'm not a big waterfowl fan (hunting or eating) but damn the way he shows how to cook duck and talks about how good it is, I think it's one of those things where it's the cook that's bad and not the piece of meat.
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Duck and goose can be made palatable if you remember that it is not domestic poultry - much drier - but Huede was referring to cow flops as the basis for a meal. There may be cooks that could make that taste OK - but I'll still pass!
 
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