Smoked Snow Goose Breasts

[ryan johnson]

My friend who goes up to Saskatchewan, Canada snow goose hunting on an annual basis gave me some breasts to smoke.  He wanted to clean out his freezer and use them used up before this years trip coming up at the end of this month so he asked me to attempt to smoke them.  I am relatively new to smoking and I will be using a Green Mountain Grill pellet smoker to get this accomplished.  I have never eaten or cooked snow goose before so I honestly am not sure what to expect from this little adventure.  I thawed them this afternoon and let them sit in cold water the water was getting bloody quite often so I kept changing the water about every 15 minutes to get them cleaned up.  there was a little bit of fat on the outside from field dressing them so i removed it. After a few hours of changing the water and rinsing the meat it cleared up very nicely.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 3, 2012

The snow goose breasts are very lean and meaty and they have very little fat in them so I'm worried about them drying and during the smoking process so I put them in a brine solution that consists of the following ingredients:

12 cups water (3/4 gallon)

4  cups apple juice (1/4 gallon)

1  cup dark brown sugar

1  cup kosher salt

I mixed all of the ingredients in my plastic brine container and I made sure that all of the ingredients were fully dissolved. They went into the brine at 7 pm tonight and I plan to let them sit in the brine until around 6pm tomorrow night.   I put a plate on top of the breasts to make sure they are sunken in the brine.  I put this brine container in the refridgerator.  After they get out of the brine I plan to rinse the brine off with water and I will dry them off  with paper toweling  and I am going to let them sit for about an hour before I smoke them to let the internal temperature

warm up a bit.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 3, 2012

These are the breasts in the brine solution.

I put a plate on top of these to sink them

because they were floating in the brine

solution.

As for smoking, I plan to smoke them at about 165 degrees on my Green Mountain Grill.  I am going to coat each breast with olive oil and add a few different seasonings to these.  I am going to use a 50/50 mixture of apple and mesquite wood pellets to smoke these breasts.

The first seasoning mix I am going to try is a lemon pepper, celery salt and olive oil rub on the outside of each breast.

The second seasoning method I am going to use is to mix dry italian seasoning into the olive oil and apply generously to the snow goose breasts.

The third method I am going to try is to inject maraschino cherry juice inside of the breasts with a syringe injector and I am going to coat the outside of each breast with cherry juice.

This is truly an experiment and I do not really know what to expect.  I will post more results as this experiment progresses.

 

[daveomak]

Ryan, morning..... When you inject meat, the final internal temp must be higher to kill all the bacteria that was injected... I think that temp is around 160... can't remember for sure...   Goose, being a very lean meat, might be a little dry if cooked above 135....  Dave

 

[smokinhusker]

Never had snow goose breasts, but I've grilled Canada goose breasts after marinating them Italian Dressing or an Asian type marinade, then wrap bacon and grill to medium rare. I've also made nuggets out of them, but the best by far has been jerky!

 

[sqwib]

I'll be watching this thread, got a couple breasts in the freezer, was going to make a goose chili or gumbo, not sure yet.

 

[ryan johnson]

Hi Guys, I got the smoke done, but I have not had time to get this stuff posted.  I promise you that I will get something posted in the next day or so.  I havent had time todo it due my work schedule which  has prevented me from updating this thread.  But I would have to say that this did work out well.  I will have some pics and results soon!  There are a couple things I would change which I will discuss when i make the next post.  Sorry to keep you all in suspense! 

 

[ronrude]

I am looking forward to the results.

 

[ryan johnson]

I have completed the smoked snow goose breasts.  I let the breasts rest in the brine mixture for nearly 24 hours and I rinsed them off in cold water and I dried them off with paper toweling.  I also let them dry off on a drying rack for about an hour before I smoked them.  Here they are drying on the drying rack.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

I put them on the smoker at 165 degrees and used mesquite pellets to smoke the breasts (this was a change due to my friends request).  I did 4 rows of different types of seasoning as you will see in the picture below.  The first row on the left was coated in olive oil, then i sprinkled on some Italian seasoning on the breasts.  The second row is a 50/50 mixture of Pure Wisconsin honey and Pure Wisconsin Maple syrup.  I brushed this mixture on both sides of the breasts generously before I put them on  the smoker grates.  The third row is a dry rub consisting of lemon pepper/cayenne/fresh ground peppercorns/garlic powder. I coated each breast with olive oil and then sprinkled this dry rub on each breast.  The fourth row of breasts was injected with the Maraschino cherry juice and I also brushed more cherry juice on each side of these before placing on grill.   

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

I left these on the Green Mountain Grill for about 2 and a half hours until i got the internal temp up to around 145 degrees.  I had to take a few of the smaller breasts off because they got cooked a bit faster than the larger breasts,and they were not all a uniform size and thickness.  I think the ones coated with olive oil worked best for this lean meat. the ones with cherry juice looked like they were drying out more quickly than the olive oil so i had to brush more of the maraschino cherry juice on during the smoking process to prevent these from drying out.  I had 2 meat probes and i was checking temps so that they did not dry out.  After about 2 and a half hours I had an internal temp of around 135- 140.  I sliced into one of the breasts and it was really rare.  I then turned up the smoker to 225 to try to finish them off more quickly.  I then brought the internal temp up to about 145 to 150.  This left the breast meat with just a slight hint of pink, and they really remained nice and juicy.  I pulled them off at this time and then put them in aluminum foil tents and let them rest in the fridge overnight. Below are some pics of each type of breasts as they came off of the grill.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

These are the breasts about 2 hrs into the smoke.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

The honey/maple glazed breasts.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

The Maraschino Cherry juice injected and brushed breasts have a real nice red coloring.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

Here are a few of the Italian seasoned breasts with the olive oil.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

These are a few of the dry rub with lemon pepper, garlic powder, cayenne and peppercorn with olive oil.

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• ryan johnson
• Sep 6, 2012

And as an added bonus there was a crane breast that i did too which i have not yet discussed.  I left this crane breast on a bit longer because it was thicker than all the rest of snow goose breasts.  I pulled the crane breast off at about 155 internal temp  and it was perfectly done. 

I let them sit overnight in the aluminum foil then we used a meat slicer to thin slice the breasts the next day.  Overall the breasts were cooked pretty well.  There were just some larger breasts that i would leave on a bit longer next time.  Based on my experience I would probably cook all the breasts to an internal temp of about 155 next time.  The meat really was quite  moist due to the brining process.  Some of the breasts had just a hint of pink when we sliced them, but they were not really undercooked either.  The meat really has a nice flavor and was very moist.  We ate a few of the breasts  and we were quite pleased with the results!  I hope this helps you guys out as a guide if anybody else decides to smoke any snow goose breasts in the future.  I might try to find a wild game dry rub seasoning the next time I smoke these just to try a different flavor for kicks, but overall I was not disappointed the way these turned out either.  Especially since I went into this not knowing what to expect.

We thin sliced the breasts and put them in foodsaver bags.  This was really a fun smoke.  Hopefully I can try some other types of wild game soon! My friend is going back up to Canada hunting at the end of this month for another hunt and he is going to bring some of this meat up there to share with the landowners who nicely allowed them to hunt on their private property!  It is always a nice gesture to thank the landowners for their generosity and kindness for letting you use their land to hunt!  Plus the next time you wish to go out they will always remember that you shared something back with them! 

 

[daveomak]

Ryan, nice job on the breasts.... they look awesome.....  

 ....  Dave

 

[moikel]

LOVE IT !! 

 

[jrod62]

Looks awesome !! Thumbs Up

 

[potminer]

Well by the looks of the goose breasts im definitely going to try this. Got freezer at farm full of bird. Just never tried smoking any yet. Did your friend say where in Saskatchewan he hunts. My parents do a lot of birds for hunters so just wondering.

 

[ryan johnson]

Potminer,

I am not sure exactly where they hunt, but I will ask him. Also, I have these thin sliced breasts packaged in foodsaver bags for the last week.  I opened up a package of them today, wow they really have much better flavor after being in the food saver bags for the week!   These really make for some excellent deli style sandwiches!