Whenever you are tempted to just pop a goose in a 180°C oven for 2 hours – please resist it.
If you want to turn a whole goose into a perfect holiday feast using conventional means and equipment, you need one thing above all: patience.
Three goals are pursued when roasting goose:
- The meat should be juicy and not dry
- The fat should be completely melted out
- The skin should invariably be wafer-thin and crispy
Preparation:
- Rid the goose of the innards that usually come with it and the fat inside the abdominal cavity
- The offal is needed for the sauce
- The belly fat (Flomen) is used as a raw material for goose fat
Ensuring Goal 1: Juicy Meat
- The goose is placed in ice-cold water in a sufficiently large container
- Add the weight of the goose to the amount of water (example: 5kg goose + 8L water = 13kg total)
- Add 1% of the total weight of fine salt to the water and dissolve
- Leave to rest for 1 hour, the salt binds the liquid in the meat fibers without removing it from them
- In the meantime prepare a filling of apples and oranges (in the CHEFS’ CLASS we season the filling with coriander seeds and dried thyme)
- Remove goose, drain and place on a wire rack
- Stuff the filling into the abdominal cavity and close it (either sew it up with kitchen twine or, as here, with a sturdy skewer)
Ensuring Goal 2: Completely Rendered Fat
- Preheat the oven to 200°C circulating air
- Check the temperature with an oven thermometer
- Place a deep baking tray on the lowest shelf in the oven and fill halfway with water
- Push the baking grate with the goose onto the next higher rail
- Bake for 1 hour
- Turn the oven down to 80°C top/bottom heat
- Remove the baking sheet and pour all the liquid into a min. Pour into a 3 liter pot: let it cool down and skim off the lard
- Put the baking sheet back in the oven and fill it halfway with water
- Now cook the goose slowly for 6-9 hours at a maximum of 80°C
Ensuring Goal 3: Wafer-thin, crispy skin
- 30 minutes before serving, empty the baking tray with the liquid that has escaped into the pot that is ready
- Now slide the baking sheet under the goose without water
- Brush the goose with salt water
- Heat the oven to 200°C for a circulating air or circulating air grill and give the goose the desired color and crust, this usually takes a maximum of 20-25 minutes
- The goose is now ready and can be carved
In this example, the goose was served with potato dumplings, pickled red cabbage and goose jus .
Tip : If you want to eat the goose for lunch, put it in the oven late the evening before and let the goose cook overnight at 80°C. In the case of ovens with a timer, the oven can be set to start at 3 a.m. Pre-cooking at 200°C can also be done later in the early evening.
