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Saturday, December 27, 2014

Four Ways to Cook a Canadian, Part One: Jerky

Every year hundreds of thousands of Canadians, mostly undocumented, slip into the United States.  No, these Canadians do not come to our country for tax free clothing and duty free liquor.  They fly into our country and build condos made of leaves and grass on prime waterfront ponds and lakes and breed.  A lot.  Any golfer that has hit a errant shot towards a pond containing these Canadians knows what I am taking about.  Geese.

Photo courtesy of all-free-download.com
Lots of them. The pond across the street from our house is a popular overnight stopover for Canadian geese during the migration and their summer vacation.  That is, until the coyotes get wind of our  northern visitors.  Anyway, enough humor.  Lets prepare our geese.

The Oldest had a few nice days during goose season this year.  He tried pan frying a few breasts and complained that it was the most inedible game that he had ever eaten.  He said it tasted like and had the consistency of tennis shoes that had sat in a locker for a month.  I can agree.  Any Canadian I know would be tough, chewy, and slightly gamy.  So, The Oldest decided to change his game plan try his hand at some goose jerky.

So, first he cleaned and sliced his goose breasts to about 1/4-1/2 inch thickness.  Then, he applied his seasonings.  One was a dry store bought BBQ rub.  The other two were wet marinades: one was plain old Italian salad dressing and the second was a mixture of various BBQ sauces from the refrigerator.  The breasts sat in their seasonings for 24 hours in the refrigerator.  The breasts were dropped off at my house for me to provide the heat and smoke.

The method is simple.  I placed in a smoker set for 200 F with some pecan in the ash pan for smoke flavor.  The jerky was placed on wire racks and smoked until all of the moisture was gone, about seven hours.  Half way through the smoking, I rotated the racks and flipped the goose tenders so ensure uniform drying.  Here is a picture of the finished product.


The dry and wet BBQ seasonings were pretty good.  The Italian dressing was OK, but not my favorite.  Overall, the breasts dried nicely and had that chewy texture and deep flavor that reminds you of jerky.  A success according to The Oldest.

As a bonus, The Oldest left us with some untouched breasts, tenders and whole, for experimentation. So, over the next week or so, I will be rolling out some methods for preparing goose.  Hopefully, they will be successes.  Stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping by,

Bill

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