Any Good Goat Recipes for the Uninitiated?

I have an admittedly limited experience with cooking goat. Growing up, it was not even available locally. In adulthood, I have only run across it perhaps a dozen times. Once at a grocery, the rest of the time at farmer's markets. I have a few recipes meant for specific cuts, but my limited experiences with the meat as a purchasable option have left me at a loss for good recipes. There seem to be a lot of recipes that treat it very simply (like strait roasting of the meat) and a handful of others that require a ton of labor-intensive prep.

I would like to see some recipes that people have for goat that fall somewhere in between. Not time/labor intensive, but not just saying "roast the meat" or "add chunks to soup". So what do you have? Family recipe or something inspired from elsewhere? I'd love it if they were good starters for people who had never had goat. Something that compliments the meat rather than masking it as some recipes I have seen seem to do.

I personally never liked anything made with goat that simply replaced beef or pork. So, here is one of my favorite recipes, which is included in Raising Goats Naturally. It is also delicious made with lamb. In fact, this is what I just had for lunch today!

Indian Goat and Sweet Potatoes
Serves 4

1 pound ground goat meat
2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 cup goat-milk yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed

Chop the sweet potatoes into 1-inch cubes. Put them into a 2-quart pot and cover them with water. Boil the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes or until a fork inserted into a cube breaks it in half easily.
Chop the onion and begin browning it in oil. Add the ground goat, salt, coriander, and garam masala. Stir the meat frequently to prevent burning until it is cooked thoroughly. Add the cooked sweet potatoes to the pan, and stir the cubes into the meat mixture.
In a bowl, mix together the yogurt, lemon juice, and garlic.
To serve, put the meat and sweet potato mixture on a plate and drizzle it with the yogurt sauce.

I agree with the above....any kind of curry is my default recipe for not only goat and mutton but all sorts of "odd" critters. The curry spices and long simmering do their work to make "wild" meats of all sorts palatable.....

Hi you all, new kid on the block and goat meat is my favourite food. Especially now, now I finally live on my Capeverdean rock in the ocean and have a few goats to call my own. I don't name the young ones because that way they taste better. Since English is not my mother tongue I have to do some serious translating on the receipes I wrote in my little red book. So I come back to you later. The receipe of Deborah will definitely be the next one I try!

Deborah Niemann wrote:I personally never liked anything made with goat that simply replaced beef or pork. So, here is one of my favorite recipes, which is included in Raising Goats Naturally. It is also delicious made with lamb. In fact, this is what I just had for lunch today!

Indian Goat and Sweet Potatoes
Serves 4

1 pound ground goat meat
2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 cup goat-milk yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 clove garlic, crushed

Chop the sweet potatoes into 1-inch cubes. Put them into a 2-quart pot and cover them with water. Boil the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes or until a fork inserted into a cube breaks it in half easily.
Chop the onion and begin browning it in oil. Add the ground goat, salt, coriander, and garam masala. Stir the meat frequently to prevent burning until it is cooked thoroughly. Add the cooked sweet potatoes to the pan, and stir the cubes into the meat mixture.
In a bowl, mix together the yogurt, lemon juice, and garlic.
To serve, put the meat and sweet potato mixture on a plate and drizzle it with the yogurt sauce.

There are recipes in the book?!?!?!? I might just have to use my tiny amount of spending money this month on the book. I'd better finish reading Gia's Garden first or I will likely have to read it all over again.
What is a good breed that is a good mix for using the buckling for meet and keeping the doelings for milkers?

The Nubian is probably the most popular breed for meat and milk and is considered dual purpose by some.

My book also has cheese recipes.

Nubian are popular, but they are also some of the noisiest animals you can get on a farm. I'm not a fan of them.

Milk and meat production depend more on care than breed. Get your feed and minerals right, and you can have heavy milk production from a meat breed, and nice meat from a milk breed. Breed does have some influence on the final product, but I would like to stress that it's not the hugest most important thing ever when you are first starting out with goats. A cross or landrace that is adapted to your region would work just as well if not better than a purebred.

My personal favourite duel purpose breeds are Saanen and Oberhasli. Saanens are a bit large for my tastes, and tend to be a bit too intelligent for a domestic goat, but they make amazing milk and tasty meat. They respond very well to good diet and can easily beat other breed standards for milk production with the right care.

That said, I started with Oberhasli goats. Oberhasli is a very old, rare breed which almost went extinct a few years back - something like 7 left in all of Canada, and only a couple thousand in the world just a few years ago. Thanks to some very dedicated and passionate people, there are now almost 50 registered Oberhasli goats in Canada. Their personalities are naturally calm and respectful of humans - once you establish your unfailing dominance. These are fairly small goats. The milk production seems to be high for their size and the meat is tasty. I started with 'experimental' and 'grade' oberhasli goats that would have gone to slaughter because they were the wrong colour - everything else was fine with them. This way I paid meat price (per pound live weight) instead of pure breed price. I can 'grade up' - whatever that means - to eventually make the offspring pure oberhasli if I want.


Now, for cooking goat - anything that takes lamb or beef will cook just fine with goat. Depending on how old, how angry, and how it was killed, will influence how you change your cooking time. Slaughter house goat seems to be tougher and stronger flavoured than home processed goat - partly because of the extra stress of transport, and all the smells and sounds from the slaughter house. All curries go well with goat. Moroccan food has a lot of goat in it. Middle Eastern cooking also uses goat. Most traditional (pre-industrial) European diets utilized a lot of goat.

As with all free range animals, I usually cook the meat at a bit lower temperature (so if it calls for 350, I'll use 325F) and for longer to help keep it tender. Using bacon fat with the goat helps with taste and texture. Also, using alcohol in cooking goat makes it much easier to digest, especially when you aren't use to eating red meat.

Gringos! When dealing with ethnic cuts of meat, use ethnic recipes. Like Birria de Chivo:



Yes, I know he's not speaking English, just watch what goes into the pot and imitate.

D. Logan: You didn't want a trite recipe, but I'm gonna offer one anyway. As far as I'm concerned the way to cook goat is to fry it in hot bacon fat, in a cast iron skillet, and season it with garlic and salt... The rarer the better. If I have gas for the grill, then steaks roasted at 500 F for about 2 minutes per side. Boil boney pieces for soup stock.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:D. Logan: ... As far as I'm concerned the way to cook goat is to fry it in hot bacon fat, in a cast iron skillet, and season it with garlic and salt... ...

That's the best way to cook everything - goat, chard, garlic, kale... everything!

Sounds delicious, I may have to give it a try with some goat meat.



Just wondering, are we talking cooking kid or cooking goat meat? Or to put it another way, is the animal over 2 years old prior to meeting it's end?

I should clarify - it's not until well into the 20th Century that animals under 12 months were considered lamb or kid. For most of history it was under 2 years old - especially with sheep. Most of my recipes are pre-1950s, so when I cook at home, I use under 2 year old animal as kid or lamb, and over 2 years as mutton or goat.

Back in response to the question on choosing a good dual-purpose breed -- It is a combination of genetics and nutrition and management. It would be a mistake to think that you could buy any goat and get a bucket buster with the right feed. It's just not going to happen. I even know someone who fell in love with a boer-alpine cross and added her to their otherwise alpine herd, and she produces far less milk than the purebred alpines. Not only do meat goats not produce well day to day, but they also don't sustain a lactation for very long. Another thing is that their mammary systems look like dairy goats did about 60-70 years ago, which is not pretty and can lead to problems like mastitis if they're really lacking in support. In our case, when we got started with the Nigerians, we just bought the first goats we found, and most of them turned out to be terrible milkers. So, rather than breed, you should really be looking at individual milking records. If you want to milk, buy your goats from someone who milks and has production records. Genetics plays a huge role in good milk production, but if you get the best genetics you can find, and then you don't feed them well, they won't produce well.

Stuffed courgettes/marrows with goat meat mixture. Easy and tasty and not too 'goaty'

fry onions till softened. add garlic to taste.
break up bread into breadcrumbs in a large bowl.
add goat meat mince (approx same volume)
mix roughly with the breadcrumbs.
add salt, pepper and herbs to taste (I like Thyme with goat)
bung the fried onions on top, mix with a fork, then get your hands in there and squish it all together.

Press the mixture into courgettes/marrows with the seeds scooped out.
place on a baking tray/dish and cover with foil
bake approx half hour, on medium heat till the courgette is soft
then another 20 mins or so to crisp off and brown the top of the meat mixture.

Pig out

Oh - and save the drippings from the tray

My hubby loved this recipe I found on youtube. The chef is a little hard to understand, but it's not a difficult recipe. We get our goat from a Halal Indian meat grocer, and when I asked how long I would need to cook it he just said very quick, that young fresh goat doesn't need to be cooked to death like the normal grocery store stuff we can get around here (read: freezer burnt pieces of stew variety relegated to one small bin in the freezer isle). I think I simmered it in the chili curry for 10-15 minutes before serving after the initial browning and searing off, and apparently, it was really tender (I don't eat meat). Here's the link for the curry: . I used the Kashmiri chilies that the recipe called for. I did really like the spicy masala paste, and I think it would go well with chickpeas and potatoes, so I will probably try it with veggies. It is very spicy, so it's not for a delicate palate.

We eat lots of deer and it is kind of like a goat.  To get used to the favor we mix ground deer 50/50 with ground beef.  After you get used to the flavor you can decrease the beef.  I have always cooked it using any recipe that I like, replacing beef with deer.

I love the flavor of goat meat, and don't feel the need to cover it up in heavy curries.  I cube it up, boil it if its tough, then fry with onions, tomatoes, garlic.  Add some green pepper and cilantro if its available.  When everything is fried nicely, I add back in some broth from boiling to make a nice sauce.  Simple but yummy.