How to Roast a Leg of Goat and Be Awesome!

Intro: How to Roast a Leg of Goat and Be Awesome!

Do you want to do something exciting? Win friends and influence people? Yes? Have you ever prepared goat? Probably not. Goat is a bit exotic. It always makes you feel exciting to do new things. As for impressing people, exotic always works. So, roast a leg of goat and you'll be awesome. Guaranteed. That's a Forkable promise. When people bite into the moist juicy meat this recipe will easily provide you, everyone's brains will explode. Maybe that should be the title of this instructable. How To Make Everyone's Brains Explode with Goat. Hmmm Anyway...

We developed this recipe for a 5 course Polynesian meal we were hosted. Check out the menu to give ideas for possible side dishes.

STEP 1: The Recipe

Roasted Leg of Goat

- 1 4-5 lb leg of goat, bone and all
- seeds from a large mature papaya
- 1-2 Tbs kosher salt
- 2-3 large onions for roasting
For the Marinade
- 20 limes, juiced
- 1 c. rum
- 1 c. white wine
- 2 c. olive oil
- 1/4 c. brown sugar
- 2-3 large beets
For the Spice Rub
- 2 Tbs dry ginger
- 2 Tbs cumin
- 1 Tbs coriander
- 1/4 c. brown sugar
- 1/4 c. kosher salt
- 1 Tbs sumac
- chopped fresh mint
- head of garlic
- fresh ginger knuckle- 2" or so.

Goat can be a tough meat, so this recipe is designed to ensure a nice tender meat. The goat leg is marinated overnight, brined in a spice rub paste for 3 hours, seared over a hot BBQ and finished off in the oven. The end result is a supple tender meat, and the mild flavor of the young goat is enhanced but not overpowered by the marinade and rub.

Steps 3-5 should be done the day before serving.
Steps 6-13 should be done the day of serving.

If you ever finding yourself asking why for any of the ingredients or techniques, check out how we came up with this recipe.

STEP 2: Purchase a Goat Leg

FInd a good butcher and get a fresh young goat leg. If you don't know where to go, you can check an ethnic butcher, Middle Eastern or Indian. You can also ask your regular butcher and see if they can special order it. A young goat leg roast often weighs in about 4-5 lbs.

For those of you who live in the Chicago area, Halsted Packing Company is a great place to get fresh goat, lamb, beef and pig.

I ask the butcher to cut the leg off toward the end so it will fit in my roaster and in my small BBQ. I save the end of the leg and put it in the freezer to save for stock.

STEP 3: Optional: Trim the Roast

The roast may be covered by a hard white tissue membrane. You may want to trim this off. Its not so important for a young goat since the meat of young goat has a milder flavor. For older goat, this harder tissue will infuse a stronger gamier flavor To loosen this membrane, put your fingers underneath the tissue and see if you can work it away from the flesh and cut it off that way. Remove as much as possible.

Trim off any extra fat deposits. Because goat is such a lean meat, you can use these fat deposits to help infuse more fat into the meat by inserting them into slits you cut in the meat, so reserve them for later.

STEP 4: Rub With Papaya Seeds and Salt to Tenderize

Rub the leg roast with papaya seeds and salt to tenderize and prepare for the marinade. Theincredible papaya seed is one of natures miracles with tons of amazing properties, including having a chemical which makes an excellent meat tenderizer. Take your papaya and cut it in half. Take the seeds from half the fruit and using the flat end your knife, smash them until you can see the white insides.

Mix mashed papaya seeds with a few tablespoons of salt and rub over your meat. Chill while you make your marinade.

STEP 5: Assemble Your Marinade

For the Marinade
- 20 limes, juiced
- 1 c. rum
- 1 c. white wine
- 2 c. olive oil
- 1/4 c. brown sugar

Assemble the marinade: Freshly squeeze your limes. Mix lime juice together with your rum, wine, olive oil and brown sugar.

Place your leg roast in your roaster and pour the marinade over the leg. Wash and peel your beets, slice and place the slices in the marinade with a few slices on top of the roast.

Goat has a tendency of turning grayish when cooked. The beets in the marinade dye the meat a pinky purple, which insures a good color when roasted.

Wrap in cellophane and chill overnight.

STEP 6: Figure Out Your Dinner Time.

Figure out what time you want to serve dinner and schedule cooktime accordingly. Once you have dinner time scheduled, figure out the timing of your meat. It will take about 3 hours with the dry rub, 20 min. or so on the bbq and ~90 minutes in the oven. It will be fine to sit for up to an hour after removing from the oven and still be warm. You'll want to get the dry rub on your meal about 5-6 hours before dinner time.

STEP 7: The Day of Serving: Prepare Your Roast

Remove the leg from your marinade. Reserve about 4 c. of the marinade for later.

Insert your lardoons. Wait, what are lardoons? Well, lardoons are just a fancy way of referring to the fat we trimmed off earlier. Take your roast, and make a few deep incisions into the meat- an inch or so. Stuff these incisions with any trimmed fat as well as a garlic clove and a thin slice of fresh ginger each. This will help infuse more fat as well as some flashy flavor into the meat.

STEP 8: Get Your Rub On

For the Spice Rub
- 2 Tbs dry ginger
- 2 Tbs cumin
- 1 Tbs coriander
- 1/4 c. brown sugar
- 1/4 c. kosher salt
- 1 Tbs sumac
- fresh chopped mint

Mix your ingredients for the dry rub. Feel free to edit or substitute any of the seasonings on my dry rub. Its not that important, just the salt, sugar and some spice. Take the seeds from the second half of the papaya and smash them the same way you did above. Mix the seeds in with the dry ingredients. They will bind the spices together into a paste.

Smear that stuff all over the meat. Make sure to get it inside any folds or crevices. This is always my favorite part!! Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Wrap it up in cellophane and chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

STEP 9: Heat Up the Grill

Heat up the grill. 30-45 minutes before you're ready to start this roast off, get your grill fired up. Figure out your timing based on your grill. We have a very small smokey joe which takes forever! But you may have a fancy stainless BBQ with burners, sinks and an attached swiveling lazy boy. If so, recline back and press the fire button on your remote control.

Get the grill HOT. We want the heat to be hot enough to sear the meat.

While you're heating up the grill, get your oven preheated to 325 degrees.

STEP 10: Grill It!

Once that fire is HOT: put the roast on the BBQ, face down first.

We're grilling it to sear it, so only give each side about 10 minutes, more or less until the surface is blackened.

STEP 11: Roast It

Have the roaster ready to go at the side of the grill. Fill the roaster with 2-3 large onions quartered to rest the roast on so the meat doesn't burn to the bottom of the pan while its in the oven.

Make sure the oven is preheated to 325 degrees.

Once the meat is done on the BBQ, get that pup into the oven. Make sure to insert a meat thermometer into the thickest part of the meat.

We want to roast until the thermometer registers 130 degrees. Check the roast at 60 minutes and every 15 minutes after until it reaches 130 degrees. It will probably take about 90 minutes or so at 325 degrees to finish roasting. When it gets to 130 remove from the oven.

Roasts will continue to cook after they are taken out of the oven, so by removing it at 130, you can ensure to end up at a preferred temp of a medium rare 140 degrees. If you prefer a more well done roast, you can leave it in the oven until 150 to yield 160 degrees.

After removing from the oven, "tent" it by loosely covering it up with aluminum foil to rest, about 10-20 minutes.

STEP 12: Carve It

Carve it up! I wish I could give you better instructions on how to carve, but I can't. I suck at this! I'm told the only way to learn is to practice, so I'll just have to keep at it. Its sort of depressing to make such a beautiful food item and then hack it apart, but oh well. Here's aguide to carving a leg of lambwhich may help you. I wish you luck.

STEP 13: Eat It!

Eat it sucka! This of course is always the easiest part. Hopefully you have some people to eat it with. Make sure you tell them how long and hard you worked on this thing. Well, I hope it wasn't actually hard, but make them think it was. Its great when people drool all over you with compliments. Suck it up. You've earned it. You just made a goat! Ha!

Comments

[robomech1]

got my goat from a Mexican carnecaria (meat market) since I live in the South West usa

[AriannaW1]

Thank you for this recipe! It turned out pretty yummy. I had two small legs of no more than 6lbs total and I pretty much stuck to the recipe except for the sumac spice that I subbed for lemon zest. The meat was quite juicy but still a little hard for my liking. I think the main problem was that the searing failed when I run out of gas on the grill. It' was also a little too salty but the flavor was great! Loved the color. My guest totally enjoyed eating the roasted beets from the marinade. And the papaya seeds were surprisingly pleasant. Nice one :)

[Boom!H3adshot]

YES bro meat is AWESOME!!!!!!! Haymitch approves!!!

[annemk39]

I remember this recipe. I made it a long time ago. Lots of work and lots of steps. A total waste of good meat and a waste of time.
The beets made it look really gross.
This time I will just roast it with a marinade of olive oil and lime/lemon juice or wine and garlic. Any other spices that you may like and salt and pepper. Goat is a great meat but this convoluted recipe just made it uneatable.
Anne

[rrhowardiii]

Do you scrape off the rub before you grill?

[gmcpcs]

I will give this a try on one of my goats I am butchering in November. Sounds really good!

[bobbourne]

What a wonderful recipe. Just finished dinner and loved it! A few comments: you say to reserve the marinade, but don't say what to do with it.. I put it in the pan while roasting, basting the meat with it, and it reduced down to a lovely sauce. I also put the beets in the pan and roasted them with the onions under the meat - they were delicious too as a side dish. I have a gas grill, but we put a few smoke chips in to add flavor, and after we seared the meat, I just turned off the center burner, adjusted the others to get indirect heat at 325, and it worked like a charm - was done in 45 min after the searing - used a big ole black cast iron frying pan an my roaster. No oven heating up the house to worry about. Awesome - thank you.

[mackamitsu]

The charcoal is a must with this recipe. Its good on a gas grill, but it is soooooooooo much more better on a charcoal grill. It makes for great left over "schwarmas" the next day. I grill a pita real quick with a touch olive oil on the pita, and the goat get puts on before obviously so its hot. When grilling the pita, if you have really hot coals or are using a gas grill, keep an eye on the pita, or don't use any olive oil.

[redhawk44]

Goat is nice yes. But I personally would avoid anything halal. Unless of course the idea of slaughtering an animal by cutting its throat and leaving it to bleed to death while still conscious and aware floats your boat.

Halal slaughter requires that the animal is NOT stunned first.

[Coffeebot]

We had a "Goat Roast" this last weekend in celebration of our Ugandan friend recieving his green card. It was done in a traditional (I think) style, and it turned out quite good. The cut of meat wasn't that great (it was equated to passing half a goat through a band saw several times), but that didn't ruin the food! We're talking about doing it again, with a better cut, and this recipe definitely looks like winner! +5 and Fav'd!

[watermelonhead]

Ew. It probably doesn't help that I haven't eaten meat since i was 3, but I'll give you points for creativity :D

[canida]

Wha? Goat is awesome! Don't knock it till you've tried it. And if you're veggie, still not cool to pick on meat recipes just for being meaty.

[Forkable]

I agree. However I have made fun of lots of my veg friends for their tofurkeys and approxi-meat items. Its too easy! But I've tried everything, because I love food. I guess the lesson is have a sense of humor but be nice. Since we're all friends here, no worries!

[watermelonhead]

MOKAY! Yay! She's happy, he's happy,we're all happy!

(or so I assume)

[watermelonhead]

Ok, I'll admit, calamari is yummy. And it's not it's meaty-ness, it looks weird.

[Forkable]

You maybe are talking about its pink color, which is because of the beets in the marinade. I think it looks sort of funny too, but I just think of it being my little faux tandoori goat leg. Ha!

[austin]

Where can you get goat in the USA? Im sure a butcher but are there any other stores you know of, also how pricey is it?

[Forkable]

LIke I said, you can probably special order it from your grocery store butcher, but it may be available at an ethnic butcher, middle eastern, Mediterranean, or Indian for example. Here in Chicago, you can find it also at Mexican markets. I've never paid more then $4 a pound, but often less. It depends on where you get it and what quality it is. Just ask around. Good Luck!

[awoodcarver]

Look in phone book for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halal or small Hispanic or Asian stores ....Cost $2.38 a lb last time I bought it

[Turnpike7a]

wow wish i had this recipe a month ago, i slaughtered my 2 goats and roasted them on a spit for 6 hours and kept them moist with beer....can't wait to try this out