Plucking a goose?

Wouldn't plunging it in hot water be more convenient? BTW did the vet also suggest killing it first? :)

Mavia

In message , Mavia Beaulieu writes

Have you ever tried pulling a large dripping wet goose out of a boiler? We have. Many years ago a friend of ours gave us a goose on Boxing Day. Someone had ordered it from him but failed to collect it. He said it would be easier to pluck if we dipped it in the clothes boiler. We duly lit the gas boiler which was in our kitchen, then dumped the goose in the boiling water for a few seconds. It took the two of us to lift it out and of course there was water all over the kitchen floor along with some feathers. What a mess. Dh took it down to the shed and hung it on a hook. It took us two days to pluck it using pliers for the wing feathers.

However I cooked it and it was the most beautiful tasting goose we have ever had. Lip smacking good. Never had one so good since but I do make sure that if we do they are oven ready. Not keen on having to clean the mess up in the kitchen, then again we no longer have the boiler. Got rid of it along with the dolly tub and dolly-legs. Shirley

"dolly tub" - I have not heard that term for years. I always thought "dolly tub" and "posser" were local to my part of Derbyshire.

Nope. I heard both terms during my childhood in County Durham. There was also "posstub", in which one manipulated the "posstick". Don't ask me how they were used - before my time, I'm afraid, but the terms were still used.

Olwyn Mary in New Orleans.

It`s common at least in most Northern parts of England, Bruce - and I think it was pretty common all over.

Pat

Well you did only live a few miles away from me. The Posser was different from the dolly -legs if I remember rightly. The dolly- legs looked like a milking stool with a handle that you plunge in the clothes and sort of turned it at the same time. A twisting type motion.

The posser was a more solid thing made of wood or upturned copper type basins. That you just thumped that up and down. Shirley

I remember the hi-tech copper thingie, and remember going to the stores (sorry, Co-operative Wholesale Society) with my gran to buy one. Must have been some years before 1959 when I left to join the RAF; but my gran's Co-op divi number was 469! The milking-stool thing I remember

- a very bleached out thing that my gran (a not insubstantial lady) used to pound the clothes into submission. On the subject of geese - when we moved house in the mid 1950s the people who took over our old council house said how much they enjoyed the jar of lard we had left behind, apparently it made wonderful chips. My gran did not have the heart to tell them that it was a jar of old goose-grease that was used on my chest when I suffered from very bad asthma attacks...

I was just joshing with Pat. No I never had the pleasure of that experience. :) Many years ago DH went goose hunting on PEI with a group from work. After seeing how gruesome it was he didn't have the heart to shoot any but was given two anyway as his share. He said they took them somewhere to be cleaned. They held the bird over a conveyor belt with fingers to remove the feathers and then they were plunged into hot water which made it easier to remove the smaller pin feathers. After that they removed the innards!

It was my job to cook the goose and I thought it was done the same way as you cook a turkey! I had always heard my friend talking about how much grease came out of a goose when it cooked. I didn't realize that a wild goose was completely different from a domesticated one! Considering all the exercise it gets flying around it was all muscle, no fat and so cooked into an inedible mass of shoe leather! I have since learned they are quite nice when cooked properly!

Mavia

wrote>

I bought a jar of goosegrease only the other day, from Tesco`s. It says it`s excellent for doing roast potatoes 0 haven`t tried it yet - maybe this weekend.

Pat

In message , Pat P writes

It is expensive stuff though Pat at about 2.69 a pot, a small one at that. Yes it is good for roasting potatoes in. Also for sautéing previously boiled potatoes in.

I got a frozen goose from Aldi last Christmas. It cost 9.99. I cooked it about 3 months ago and it yielded 3x 1lb jars of fat which can be kept for about 2 to 3 years in the fridge. The goose itself fed 5 of us so it was a good buy.

Shirley

In message , Mavia Beaulieu writes

You are so right about them being different. My son brought me a wild goose to cook for the family dinner. I looked on the Internet for a recipe and I marinated it in cider I believe and sort of steam roasted it. Not much meat on it but loads of soup like gravy that fed us a few days as a soup.

It reminds me of when we went on holiday and I asked DS to get me some meat from the butchers since he was bringing a girl friend home the day after we got back for dinner. He forgot about it but went to my brother who kept a few chickens in his freezer. Just to be on the safe side I got a batch of lamb chops out of the freezer because the chicken looked small.

I am so glad I did for when the chicken was roasted we could not even cut it with the carving knife. It looked like one of those plastic things that they put in fridges to advertised them. It actually bounced of the floor when I threw it away. It turned out it was a battery hen only good for stewing for about a week for stock. The lamb chops saved the day. LOL Shirley

When I was a student we rented a flat from a very old estate agent in Newcastle upon Tyne and the rental agreement (also somewhat dated) forbade us from possing upstairs and made us liable for any damage to the property made by possing downstairs. I'm not geriatric - this was only 20 years ago!

In my opinion the best use of left over goose fat is as a base for the french dish Cassoulet. Mmm!

Karen Millennia Designs

If you were possing you did not need to join a health club or a gymnasium!

Possing - using a posser which is a device to agitate clothes in a tub (usually termed a dolly tub) of hot, soapy water; used prior to the introduction of new-fangled washing machines.

Follow up to my last posting - some photographs on

And some recollections at