Slow Cooked Snow Goose

Corey Mulhair for SPLIT REED

As spring arrives in North Central North Dakota, with it comes tremendous numbers of migratory waterfowl. A lot of them call this area their breeding and brooding grounds, while a great number continue on their journey further north as the snow line recedes and waters open up.

Spring 2020 appeared slowly and with an unfortunate and unprecedented amount of unharvested wheat in the fields. Fall 2019 brought with it rains that never seemed to stop long enough to harvest crops, and when it did the grain was too wet and the ground was like grease. As the Canada geese made their way north to my area in March, they slowly enlarged small open pockets of water in the ice into large roosting areas. Then the snow geese came, and they arrived in numbers my farmers say they hadn’t seen since the 1980s.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of a few good hunts, harvesting dozens of adult snow, blue and Ross geese. The plethora of birds had me wondering, what would I do with these birds.. Jerky? Sausage? No, something a little more particular was in order. I asked my buddy, Jerah, what he was doing with some of his California rice fields shot birds, and he sent me a recipe. I made it and loved it, so I’ve decided to share it with the readers of Split Reed. It’s hard to categorize flavor-wise but has hints of a pot-roast X taco fusion. Check it out below!

This recipe calls for 10-12 snow goose breasts (about 4 lbs), so make sure to shoot at least 5 birds, but 50 works too. Since this is a whole muscle recipe, when you breast the birds, set 5-6 birds (10-12 breasts) aside which haven’t been shot up heavily in the chest. I like to brine the breasts in saltwater (water works fine as well) for about 3-4 days, changing the water after the second day. It pulls blood out and makes it easier to identify bloodshot to cut away.

Ingredients:

• 1 Quart Chicken stock

• 1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar

• 3 Tbs Chopped Garlic (or 1 Tbs garlic powder)

• 1 tsp Oregano

• 2 tsp Black Pepper (ground)

• 2 tsp Cumin (ground)

• 1 tsp Cinnamon (ground)

• 1 Tbs Salt

• Juice of 1 Lemon (or Lime)

• Juice of 1 Orange

• 1 Onion (diced)

• Pinch each of Chili Powder and Smoked Paprika

• 6 Tbs Brown Sugar

• 1 Can Peaches

4 pounds of goose breasts, or 10-12 breasts. Make sure you remove any and all BB’s!

Procedure:

1. Dice the onion and set it aside.

2. Cut the breasts in half longways, or keep whole. Either way, pan fry them in some oil ‘til they brown up a little. Add them to the crockpot.

3. Sauté the onion in the pan after cooking the snow goose breasts, leftover juices and all. Scrape everything into the crockpot.

4. Add the Quart of stock, and all the dry ingredients.

5. Squeeze the juice of the lemon/lime, and the orange, into the crockpot.

6. Add peaches.

7. Mix it up, and cook for about 6 hours on high, or 8 hours on low- either way, you want the breasts to be pull-apart tender.

When it’s all done cooking, you can reduce the juices down to a thicker sauce using a stovetop sauce-pan, and then shred the meat and add it to the sauce. Otherwise, you can eat the meat as is!

Snow geese in my area are usually a short-lived form of spring excitement. When they arrive they usually push through in just a week or two. This year was different, they showed up and their numbers grew well into the millions for a couple of weeks, and even as they started to leave they were still around in extremely huntable numbers. We took advantage of it. We had some great hunts, and I felt that meant I should try some new things with the snows. Thanks to my buddy and his recipe, I’ve got a new go-to option. I’m really happy with the flavor and texture of the meat and I recommend anyone with a pile of snow goose breasts and a crockpot to give it a shot!