Goat Meat

You either love goat or hate it! I certainly love it! We are developing quite a following for the goat meat that we supply, but I've noticed that the most popular by far is the diced goat, closely followed by the goat roasts and shanks. Neck chops, ribs and loin chops are not so popular. One of the reasons we do the little loin roasts are to do something other than chops. They are very good too and quite popular.

A lot of the traditional goat curries that you find in the restaurants are made with a bone in cut of meat. My butcher and I can't quite work out how to cut it like that, so the closest thing we do is offer the loin chop and just the bones. Some of our Frequent Free Rangers received goat loin chops in their order last week, so I thought I'd cook some last night just to confirm what I did suggest to a couple of people. It worked quite well.....

Chops or Ribs - oven baked with vegetables

Slice up some veg as you would if you were doing a potato bake and layer them in a baking dish. I used the following, because I wanted to clean out my fridge of old vegetables before I put in my new lot.

• Potato - normal and sweet
• pumpkin
• zucchini 
• squash
• capsicum
• carrot
• garlic
• onion

I sprinkled the layers with some salt, poured over about 1/2 cup of bone broth and then placed the chops and ribs on top. I baked them for 1.5 hours, turning the meat over half way, and then sprinkled with a mix of coriander, parsley and mint. Or you could layer the herbs in with the veg.

The chops were perfectly cooked and tender, but the ribs could've done with another 1/2 hour.

.........

One thing to remember with our goat is that it will always need to be slow cooked in some form - either in the oven, crockpot/slowcooker or even just braised on top of the stove. I'm sure it would also work okay in a pressure cooker, I just haven't done it. Even the little loin roasts would need a good hour in the oven to ensure that they are tender and tasty. If you would like to have goat chops that look more like grilled chops, they can be oven roasted on their own, just toss them in something nice * and place on a tray on the oven and cook for a an hour and a half, turning half way. * I really like garlic, rosemary or parsley and lime juice as a marinade.

Goat is really flexible, so don't be scared to try it. If you have a favourite lamb shank recipe, try it with goat shanks. Cook the neck chops like you would cook beef osso bucco. Marinate and oven cook the ribs like you would beef or pork ribs. Slow cook the goat roast and pull it like pulled pork, and serve on tortillas with salsa, yoghurt and avocado. 

If you do something nice with Goat or even any of our meat, please feel free to post it on our Facebook page. It might help to give inspiration to someone else to give it a try.