
Grilled Pink Grapefruit Margaritas
Grilling adds a whole new layer of smokey flavor to these not-too-sweet frozen pink grapefruit margaritas. I’ve always been a big fan of...
Unlike it’s milder poultry counterparts of chicken and turkey, goose has a pronounced flavor and is all dark meat. Most often, it is compared to beef, rather than chicken in both flavor and behavior during cooking. Once you complete a few basic prep steps, it’s not at all difficult to cook goose. But the biggest reason to choose goose for your holiday table is the fat. As lard is to pork, and tallow is to beef, surely schmaltz is to poultry. Goose fat or schmaltz is the Rolls Royce of all animal fats, and will impart incredible flavor on anything it touches.
In this case, it will touch potatoes. And you will love them. In fact, there’s so much fat on the goose, you can (and should) remove the larger deposits that are around the cavity, which can be easily torn off and rendered. I keep this rendered fat in a mason jar in my refrigerator and consider it a secret weapon in the war on blandness.
I chose to use a grill rotisserie for this recipe, because it helps cook the bird evenly while still allowing it to absorb the char-grilled scents. In this case, I kicked it up a notch by using Kingsford Cherrywood charcoal. It’s made using real chips of cherrywood, so you get a light fruity smoke overtone in addition to the charcoal, and it pairs perfectly with poultry. The rotisserie also works great because it leaves enough room to perfectly nestle a pan of potatoes to strategically catch all of the delicious drippings.
If you don’t have a rotisserie, not to worry! You can recreate this recipe on your grill using the two-zone method. Simply light your coals and pile them to one side of your grill – that is now your hot zone, and the side without the coals is the cool zone. In this case, you would cook your goose entirely on the cool side of the grill, so it can gently roast while soaking up all the subtle charcoal and cherrywood notes. You might want to turn it midway through the cook so it develops color evenly.
Embden goose is the most commonly raised domestic variety, though you could of course use wild Canadian, Snow or Specklebellies. And while we usually look for huge turkeys to grace our tables, the medium or smaller geese are far more tender, so I recommend keeping it about 10lb. You can order goose online or your local specialty food/meat market can order it in for you, just remember it may take up to two weeks.
Finally, it is worth noting that the recipe below calls for the goose to be cooked to 165f, which is USDA’s advised safe temperature and how you 100% avoid making any of your guests ill these holidays (which is obviously a positive). However, goose is much like duck with dark breast meat that overcooks easily. Chef types and foodie folk will tell you that it should remain pink when cooked correctly. I personally prefer to take mine to 145f, which is somewhere between super danger zone and overdone. You are free to make your own choice, now that you have all the info! I use a this thermometer to make sure I’m in the right zone.
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Grilling adds a whole new layer of smokey flavor to these not-too-sweet frozen pink grapefruit margaritas. I’ve always been a big fan of...
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