So... what do geese and ducks taste like, based on their habitats?

The geese around here taste like beef according to my taste buds, and I believe it is because they are foraging on the same corn that the beef cattle are eating.

I like putting a bunch of breasts in the crockpot with onions and the additon of a nice dark beer, such as a Bock.
 
I take breast filets and slice them open like a pita pocket. Then I stuff the pocket with cheese and hot peppers. Finally, i wrap them in bacon and pin the bacon in place with toothpicks. Put them in a hot pan with hot oil, or on a grill, and cook till medium rare. Deeelicious whether duck or goose.

I have brought this in to work several times and it disappears within minutes.
 
Wrong Way said:
Agreed. Treat wild goose like beef, NOT poultry.... Either cook it medium rare, or moist cook the everlovin hell out of it for hours....anything else and you won't be able to eat it. Also, Canada's have no fat (unlike a domestic goose), so you'll need to add fat. Butter in copious amounts is your friend.
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The Canada Geese we have here in B.C. are quite often fat. Unless you are dealing with lessers, of which I have never seen with any fat.
 
Concerning the fat content of ducks & geese. The meat has almost zero fat, all the fat is found right under the skin. If you roast a whole bird from the late fall (it's amazing how fast they pile on fat) you will render a lot of grease. But if you breast them out or have an early season bird, it is leaner than anything you can buy. Barbeque no more than medium rare or you're asking for rubber.
 
Grouse Man said:
.... As long you aren't cooking shovellers or mergansers....
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Amen to that ! To that list you can add a few more ... Pacific Flyway Canvasback that have been feeding on rotten salmon are pretty hummy, and
Snow Geese from the James Bay flats are not among my favourites either. I've had a few late season mallards that were not so great from the
lower Great Lakes that were feeding on things like crayfish. Goldeneye (Whistlers) and Scaup (Bluebills) that have been on zebra mussels aren't
particularly good either.

My favourites are Canvasback and Redheads, typically from the Lake St. Clair / Lake Erie marshes in November. Corn & barley fed mallards, blacks & pintails are
right up there too. Western pea field birds are A-O.K. too. Never had a bad Canada, but the best tasting (at least to me ) are White-fronted geese (Specklebellies)
particularly the juveniles (young of the year) before they get speckle-up as adults.

Invest in a couple of good game cookbooks and learn the techniques used to keep wild meat moist & flavourful. Proper field handling, dressing and
preparation of game meats is tantamount to achieving good results on the table. It's hard to screw-up a hamburger, but with a little effort, ducks, geese and in
fact most wild game deserves more than being ground up into sausages or pepperretes IMHO.

The average cook, not excluding a number of professionals, attempt to prepare game in the same manner as domestic meats. It is essential to recognize and substitute
for the lack of natural fat otherwise your results may be dry, tough & stringy ... and most of the game's great natural flavour will be lost through improper preparation, overcooking
or worse, masked by some overly piquant sauce or condiment designed to cover-up or alter the real taste.
 
I'm very interested in getting some geese this fall and experimenting with cooking them. I have some experience with ducks shot over ponds/lakes and unless you eat them very rare, they taste badly of liver. I would love to shoot ducks over a field where they have been finishing themselves on grain to see the difference.
 
we used to roast them like a chicken with stuffing and didn't enjoy them very much, too dry. Then Doug told us that roasting a goose is the worst way to cook a goose. He gave us the idea of making goose jerky out of them. Simply awesome, indeed! All our geese now go to goose jerky!
 
On the BC coast here, I have never had a bad mallard, though there are those who claim that those feeding on salmon carcasses up in the Harrison River taste fishy.

I've never seen a mallard eat a dead fish, so I'm tempted to say it's b.S., but who knows, I was wrong once before.

Hunting near the salt water and on the waterfront in southwest B.C., I find the widgeons quite palatable despite the fact that they are feeding on sea life, but the pintails on the other hand are fishy. They are supposed to be very good eating elsewhere but here they have a metallic sea snail like flavour.

The geese are good eating, the Canadas are the best.
 
I let some guys hunt on my property way up north near Thunder Bay, they offered me some bird like everytime they show up but I just take some sausages from them now. I find them to be like any other sausage full of unmentionables but taste so great.
 
I agree with the vast majority of what is written above, but the most useful thing that I would suggest, as with any recipe but especially for wild game, is not to let your family be the guinea pigs! Try your traditional recipe on a (wild) goose first and see if you like it. You may want to change the recipe, or soak it in brine longer, or stuff it with ground pork or any number of rut fine suggestions above. Or it may be delicious the first time out! Remember too that a goose in September does not taste the same as a goose in December. Many have hit on this already, but if a goose just arrived from the shores of some lake up north where it was dabbling for snails, it'll taste different, and have even less fat, than after he's been cleaning up felled corn on farmers fields for a few weeks!

Last point - and my apologies if this is incorrect or if I missed some of your previous replies in this thread - but am I correct that you have not hunted waterfowl much before (just based on your questions about how they taste)? If so, and speaking from bitter experience - LOL - I would not underestimate how difficult they are to hunt. They look pretty tame and silly dabbling around out there, but the art of scouting, calling, decoying and shooting them is just that.... an art. It's taken me a decade or so, with the help of many others, to become even marginally proficient at it (and some would say that I'm not even that! LOL). Anyhow - I just mean that if you haven't done much, now is a good time to try to hook up with some buddies who have to get you started if you plan to have some geese to play with in the kitchen and to provide for your family celebration!

Dave
 
memaquay said:
Some people, particularly wives, might find the smell of the goose cooking to be somewhat "disgusting". That's what wife #1 said anyway. Haven't tried it on wife #3 yet, and I'm getting tired of gett'n married, so think I'll save the next goose for a boys night.
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That was a good chuckle to start my day. Thanks.
 
Where they live isn't as important as what they've been eating. Geese near Barrie might have been feeding on corn. Maybe not though. Ate a duck I took out of Tiny Marsh, long ago, that was mushy. Most likely due to my total inexperience at the time.
If your house smelled bad from cooking domestic geese, you did something very wrong. Isn't the same as a wild goose anyway. A wild goose has far less fat.
Butter in copious amounts is your friend. Yep and it applies all the time and to everything. Explains the heart attack and quad by-pass I had last year though.
 
I ate duck from Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. You know what, all of them tasted the same. Primarily, they feed on aquatic vegetation and insects, and it isn't until mid to late September that they start feeding off the crops, therefore; I believe that crops have very little effect on their flavor. Once they leave the crop field and go back to roost at night, on whatever body of water, they continue their regular diet.......aquatic vegetation and insects.
 
around here we turn goose into pepperettes. cut it 75 goose / 25 fatty beef (blade works) and make pepperettes.


We've also been known to boil the caucus and make goose barley soup (just follow any beef barley soup recipe).


enjoy!
 
track said:
I ate duck from Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. You know what, all of them tasted the same. Primarily, they feed on aquatic vegetation and insects, and it isn't until mid to late September that they start feeding off the crops, therefore; I believe that crops have very little effect on their flavor. Once they leave the crop field and go back to roost at night, on whatever body of water, they continue their regular diet.......aquatic vegetation and insects.
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Exactly!!
 
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