I’m following the fashion this year and cooking a goose for our christmas dinner. Apparently, it’s not as easy as it looks. Luckily I’ve got my mum’s top tips for the perfectly cooked goose.

It being the season of good will and all that, I thought I’d share them with you.

1. Cooking a goose is not easy. It’s not like cooking a turkey or a chicken. If you’re feeling nervous – you should be. Make sure you have got a big enough pan to not only hold the goose but also a cooking rack underneath it. A goose must not cook in its own fat. If it does, really bad things happen. I don’t know what they are, but take my mum’s word for it. Fat needs to run off. A goose can produce a tremendous amount of fat!

2. Don’t wrap your goose in cooking foil. You may have heard that geese dry out really easily (see point one above). This is true. But putting foil round it won’t help. And it will probably stick to the bird and burn. So definitely don’t use it.

3. The outside of your goose must be very dry. To make sure you get lovely crispy skin that’s nice to eat, your goose needs to be dried. If possible, hang it up somewhere to dry for 24 hours before you roast it. Pat it down with kitchen towel before you put it in the oven. If you like, you can very lightly salt the skin.

4. The inside of your goose must be very moist and juicy. Put lots of fruit and juicy stuffing in the middle because it has a large interior cavity and it can dry out. This is the trick to making sure your goose doesn’t look like a shrivelled prune when you take it out of the oven.

5. The fat is useful. Use the fat to cook your potatoes in. Makes them taste amazing and really crispy.

The cooking time for a goose will vary dramatically depending on its size. Gordon Ramsay recommends about 15 mins for each kilo. This BBC video might have more detailed advice … if you can be bothered to watch it – I couldn’t, I rang my mum instead. She says: the oven should be about 150 degrees for a fan oven – and then you just have to keep an eye on it. When the bird starts to get a good colour (and you’ve removed the excess fat to start your roast potatoes) use a two pronged fork and press into the thigh meet until you reach the bone.?

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Originally posted 2008-12-23 04:03:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter