Most often stuffed goose can be seen on the festive table on holidays. This dish has become a symbol of Christmas and New Year for many. Cooking a stuffed goose is not too difficult, but the process takes a lot of time. However, the result will greatly delight you. Juicy and tender meat of this bird, the filling, saturated with fat and aroma, will not leave you indifferent.
How to choose a goose?
This bird is not easy to prepare, as it has thick skin and a lot of fat. Often meat is either not baked or becomes very dry and difficult to chew. It also happens that an improperly prepared goose has an unpleasant aftertaste. This bird is very high-calorie - one hundred grams of meat accounts for as many as three hundred and twenty calories. If you follow the tips, you can cook a great dish.
If you want to bake a stuffed goose in the oven, take a young bird. Here, too, have their own nuances. If the goose is three months old, then it will be baked quickly enough, but six months old will be much more aromatic and more suitable for stuffing. How to determine the age of the bird? Pay attention to the paws. In the young, they are yellow with soft membranes, and the breast is flexible. The old goose has coarser and reddish legs and a hard sternum.
If you choose between chilled and frozen poultry, no doubt give preference to fresh. There should be no spots on the skin of the goose, unpleasant odors should be absent, and the meat should take its previous shape after pressing. Choose the weight of the bird based on how many people you will cook. Do not forget about the volume of your oven. It is best to choose a goose from two to four kilograms for baking. No matter how you like to cook stuffed goose, recipes suggest using a carcass of about 3-4 kilograms.
Cooking a bird
In the store, carcasses are sold plucked, without giblets. Take a close look at the goose. It should not have feathers. A goose bought from farmers needs longer preparation. Remove the bristles to get a crisp and tender crust. To do this, take the goose by the neck and lower it into boiling water for a minute. Repeat the process, but now grab the carcass by the paw. If you want to bake a whole goose, then you do not need to cut it. Cut off excess fat on the belly, tail and neck. Do not forget to cut off the extreme phalanges at the wings so that they do not burn.
Goose stuffed with apples
Such a dish will be a real table decoration on holidays. If you have not cooked this bird before, do not be afraid to try. A recipe with photos will help you with this. What do you need to buy for cooking?
Of course, you will need the goose carcass itself, weighing two to four kilograms, depending on the number of people.
To get a stuffed goose, as in the photo above, you need:
- Three large apples.
- 5 pieces of dried apricots and prunes.
- 3 tablespoons of apple juice.
- 100 ml apple cider vinegar.
- A few peas of black pepper.
- 5 pieces of cloves.
- 3 sheets of laurel.
- 100 grams of cane or regular sugar.
- Two teaspoons of caraway seeds.
- Two teaspoons of bee honey.
- Food salt to taste.
Cooking goose with apples
First, check if there are any feathers left. If they are, then you need to singe them on fire. We remove the tail and phalanx, that is, the tips of the wings. If the insides are not removed, then it's time to get rid of them. Do not throw off the giblets yet, as you can prepare wonderful dishes from them, or you can add them to the goose filling.
First, we will prepare a marinade for meat. To do this, mix juice, sugar, salt, cloves and bay leaf, pepper, vinegar in a saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, cool and add three glasses of water. Pour the goose with this liquid, leave to marinate for a long time (at least 24 hours). Next, get the bird out of the marinade, dry the carcass with paper towels. Cut the apples into fairly large cubes and mix them with dried apricots and prunes.
When stuffing goose fruits, try not to do it tightly, as fat and juice will be released during cooking. Sew the hole with thread, and then make a few punctures of the carcass with metal skewers. To make the goose more fragrant, you need to rub it with spices. In a mortar, grind pepper with caraway seeds and salt. Rub the poultry carcass with olive oil and the resulting spices. Immediately wrap the goose in several layers of foil. Try to prevent holes in the foil so that the grease does not leak out. Put the bird in the oven, heated to 200 degrees, for about two and a half hours. Time is calculated as follows: one kilogram of poultry will require one hour of baking. If the bird weighs three kilograms, it will take from two and a half to three hours.
After time, we take out the goose and unfold the foil. You will see that there is a lot of fat in it. It must be drained into a bowl and add two teaspoons of honey there. The resulting mixture again rub the bird and return to the oven, but we make the temperature a little less - about 180 degrees. We bake the bird for about half an hour, but grease this mixture every five to ten minutes. So the goose will turn out rosy and very appetizing. We recommend eating it with cranberry sauce, which will tarnish the taste of meat. The stuffed goose in the oven according to the recipe presented above is tender and juicy.
Three filling options
You can cook a goose in the oven not only with apples. We offer you such options of fillings:
1 option.
- A kilogram of potatoes.
- A pound of goose or chicken giblets.
- Three large onions.
Option 2.
- Two glasses of cooked rice.
- Half a goose of chicken giblets.
- Three onions.
3 option.
- A pound of fresh or canned champignons.
- Three onions.
- Two glasses of buckwheat.
- Three sour apples.
You can use them in the filling, you can overlay the goose on top so that it does not burn, and only then cover it with foil.
Bake goose
First, the goose needs to be washed well, salt and pepper must be salt and pepper on the outside and inside and leave it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
While it cools there, prepare the filling. Boil potatoes or rice until half cooked in salt water. Fry bird offal with onions and mix with potatoes or cereals. It is better to stuff a goose with a filling in which a piece of butter is added. Sew the bird after stuffing. Spread it on a baking sheet with the back down. You can use the sleeve for baking for an hour and a half, and then bake without it to form a crust.
What is a good sleeve? In it, the meat will be soft and tender, will not burn. To prevent goose bumps from sticking to the material of the sleeve, you can top it with thinly sliced apples. This will give the meat a unique taste and aroma. If there is no sleeve and foil, cook it on a baking sheet in the oven at a temperature of two hundred degrees for at least two hours. During this process, constantly water the bird with the fat that drains. So the goose will not be dry.
Buckwheat goose
You will need the following products:
- Goose carcass weighing about three kilograms.
- Buckwheat groats - a glass.
- Offal broth or plain water - 300 ml.
- Mushrooms (champignons or forest) - 200-300 grams.
- Bacon - 200 grams.
- A handful of prunes.
- One medium-sized carrot.
- 3-4 apples.
- A clove of garlic.
- Pomegranate seeds (to decorate the dish).
- Vegetable oil.
- Juniper Berries - 10 pcs.
- Salt and pepper.
Cooking process
Goose well washed, cut off excess fat from the carcass and remove the extreme phalanges of the wings. From these phalanges and offal (if left), you can cook a broth. Cut off the neck of the carcass (leave a little skin and stab it with toothpicks or sew). Mash the juniper with salt or grind with a blender. Mix this with pepper and grate the goose well on the outside. Inside, grate the carcass with crushed garlic with salt and pepper.
Cooking minced meat.
Rinse groats well and sort out. Cook in a proportion of one to three in water or broth until half cooked. Peel and chop the onion coarsely. Wash the mushrooms (if forest, then pre-process), chop coarsely. Cut the bacon into cubes. Fry it lightly in a pan. Add oil and put onions in the pan. Fry until soft, and then add carrots there and fry together for about three minutes.
Now it’s the turn of the mushrooms, which must also be sent to the products in the pan. Salt, pepper and fry for three to four minutes. It remains to put buckwheat there and mix thoroughly. Next, add prunes.
Stuff the carcass with this filling, sew up. Place the goose in the baking sleeve, tie the ends tightly, make several holes to let off steam. Bake at about 200 degrees for about two hours. Put the finished goose on the wire rack over the baking sheet. And in the pan put the sliced apples and put everything together in the oven.
After about 15 minutes, remove the goose, put it on a dish, decorate with baked apples and pomegranate seeds.