Roasting a Goose in the Smart 120
by Unknown - 09:59 on 07 January 2014
Roasting a Goose in the Smart 120
A goose is what we usually have for Christmas, but this year we had it for New Year's day, because we went to our daughter's for Christmas. I ordered a medium-sized goose. The butcher supplied one which weighed 5.7kg including giblets and fat, but 4.45kg (so about 10lbs) excluding them. I think this is just within the medium range for a goose although at the upper end of it. It turned out that the goose just fitted inside the Smart (with the stuffing inside the body of the goose, as opposed to the crop, and the legs trussed crossways to help keep them from touching the wall of the oven). I would not advise anyone to try a goose larger than this in the Smart 120.
The accompaniments we had were sage and onion stuffing, apple sauce and gravy. The vegetables (nearly all from our garden) were roast potatoes, mashed potatoes from special red-fleshed potatoes (Highland Burgundy), beetroot in Cumberland sauce, buttered parsnips, brussel sprouts with bacon and leeks flavoured with lemon.
My conception of how to cook a goose is different from that of most recipe books. They tend to propose cooking a goose relatively quickly at a temperature of 180C-190C and twenty minutes per pound. I favour cooking it more slowly at a temperature target of 170C for four hours (for a goose of this size) and then a final hour at a target of 190C (thus an overall time of about half an hour a pound). I have described the temperatures as targets because, when one introduces a large mass, the oven tends to cool. At the beginning, I have some water under the goose as well as foil on top it. The water helps to ensure that the goose stays moist. The goose is extensively pricked with a fork to ensure that the fat finds its way out. The water underneath the goose gradually evaporates and is replaced by fat.
My recipe presents two issues for cooking with the Smart: (1) how to ensure the appropriate temperature, (2) how to cope with the humidity formed in the oven so as to enable roast potatoes to be cooked? My solution, for the first four hours of cooking, was to use an output setting for the Smart of 3 (=oven setting 1*) with a large enough central heating zone switched on in the house to ensure that the Smart would never switch to output levels 1 and 2. I placed the roasting tin for the goose at the very bottom of the oven and the goose itself on an adjustable roasting rack which raised it a few centimetres above the bottom of the oven. At output level 3 (=oven setting 2*), the Smart reaches about 200C at the top of the oven, but with lower temperatures towards the bottom. I measured the temperature of the oven with a dial thermometer sitting on the edge of the roasting tin. It showed 140C at the beginning of cooking because the mass of the goose lowered the temperature in the oven, but the temperature gradually rose towards the target of 170C. The goose was basted and turned every hour and opening and shutting the oven door must have helped reduce the humidity. However, I also placed the tray which Klover supply on the top shelf to divide the oven in two with the bottom of the oven reserved for the goose and the top reserved for roasting potatoes. The dividing tray did keep the humidity low in the top of the oven. On top of the oven, I had a cast iron roasting tray. At the beginning of cooking, its purpose was to help keep the temperature of the oven stable (it was pre-heated before the goose went in). At the end of four hours, when I basted the goose, I replaced the foil on the goose with bacon and I raised the ouput level of the Smart to 4. Potatoes for roasting and goose fat were put in the cast iron roasting tin at the top of the oven. At goose-level, my thermometer indicated that the temperature gradually rose from 170C to 190C.
This method of cooking produced a well-cooked, tender, succulent and non-greasy goose, also good roast potatoes.
While the goose was cooking, the rest of the meal was cooked on top of the oven. This began with a kettle on the boiling ring together with a large cast iron frying pan on the area of the hob above the oven. The frying pan was used to render the fat which the butcher had left in the goose. The rendering was done gently over a period of over two hours. Goose fat is expensive to buy, but very good for roasting vegetables (our roast potatoes were done in goose fat), and also for various other purposes, for example, mixed with butter it provides very good shortening for pastry. As fats go, goose fat is thought by many to be relatively good for human health. So I think it is well worth rendering the fat for keeping.
When the kettle had boiled, water from it was used for the steamer in which the Christmas pudding was cooked and the stockpot in which stock was made from the giblets. Both these pans had been preheated on relatively cool parts of the Smart's hob. When the Christmas pudding and the giblets had been added to their respective pans, the steamer, and then the stockpot, were placed on the boiling ring to bring them to the boil and then moved elsewhere on the hob to simmer. Later in the cooking, a pyrex saucepan was used for gently browning a little flour in preparation for thickening and browning the gravy. A saucepan was used to make apple sauce. A two-tier steamer was added to steam potatoes for mashing and to steam beetroot. A bain marie (38 cm long and 28 cm wide) was added on the far right of the cooking hob. The bain marie was used to keep cooked vegetables warm (e.g. the mashed potatoes) in ceramic pots. When partially cooked, the beetroot was transferred to a saucepan were it was left to simmer, at the edge of the hob, in Cumberland sauce with sultanas added. After that the parsnips were steamed, then lightly buttered and seasoned and placed in one of the ceramic pots in the bain marie. Finally, the brussel sprouts and the leeks were steamed. The former were put, together with bacon, in a ceramic pot in the bain marie and the latter were put in another pot in the bain marie together with a very little butter and a squeeze of lemon. Towards the end of cooking I had eight utensils: the kettle, the Christmas pudding steamer, the stockpot, the gravy pan, the apple sauce pan, the beetroot pan, the vegetable steamer and the bain marie all being heated to an appropriate degree by the Smart's hob. When the goose was removed for resting prior to carving, plates were heated at the bottom of the oven
My wife adds: all this created sufficient washing up for my family to really appreciate the work that had gone into creating an extremely tasty meal!!
* The Smart 120's oven settings 1,2 and 3 are identical with its output settings 3, 4 and 5 except that, on the oven settings, the Smart 120 continues at the same kilowatt level until it reaches its maximum boiler temperature and then it reduces output radically (and may even switch off to prevent overheating) whereas on its normal output settings the Smart gradually reduces its kilowatt level as it approaches its target boiler temperature. Therefore, if one wants to ensure a long period of cooking at a steady output, one needs to provide a heating/hot water circuit that will take that output throughout the period and prevent the Smart's boiler from becoming too hot.. If one does do this, then it does not matter whether one has the Smart set to an oven setting or to its corresponding output level. The effect on cooking is the same. If one does not do it, the boiler inside the Smart will get too hot, the Smart's output will reduce, or it will even switch off, and so one's oven and hob will cool.
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What an excellent article. Thanks so much for going to the trouble of writing it up. You have completed removed any doubts I had about the Smart's being able to cope with the most complex of meals.
There is still not much "user" info about the Smart around and your posts are gaining quite a reputation for the quality of their information. Once again, my thanks.