On goose fat

I never paid all that much attention to paleo diet types... until I had to render goose fat.

The goose was delicious, but there is a lot of fat and skin to that bird. You have some nice pieces of that with your meat, but there was still a bunch left. I've heard that it's good to cook with, and the bird wasn't particularly cheap, so I wanted to do something with the rest of the carcass.

Enter paleo dieter Greg Parham.

I just came across him by googling, but he's got a great guide to rendering fat that should apply more broadly than just for geese. I now have two jars in my fridge: one from the drippings in the roasting pan. This isn't quite as pure because my orange juice/honey/herb glaze dripped in too. But most of the honey carmelized into charred blobs so I think this stuff is fairly pure - just not perfect. The other jar is straight from the rendered fatty parts of the bird. Greg's steps worked like a charm.

I also got two baggies of "cracklins" from it - kind of like pork rinds but for the goose I guess. I probably won't finish all of them but they're tastey. The goose fat has a sweeter taste to it than others (that came out in the gravy too).

This morning I used the first jar (the one that might have some of the glaze in it) to make hashbrowns. Normally I use bacon fat (much better than some other oil), but this goose fat blew bacon fat out of the water (and that's saying something!). I'll have to think up something nice to cook with the purer fat that I rendered.

That's all - just a fun food experience I thought I'd share.