Baby Goat: Cabrito, Chevron, Kid

[Richard_D]

I fancy cooking some kid goat but I'm not too sure about it and would appreciate any advice. I've done a brief search but only found recipes for long, sloooow cooking of legs/shoulder etc and I'm thinking of something speedier.

I know Goat takes some cooking as it can be quite tough, but is this the same for Kid? I'm looking at a fillet or rack which I presume would be quite tender and so could be hot roasted or pan fried.

Also assuming I have a tender piece of fillet can you eat it rare (like lamb) or is that inadvisable?

Cheers

[Ann_T]

I find that the kid meat cooks very quickly. It isn't tough at all. And we eat the tender cuts, like the rack and the tenderloin rare to medium rare the same way we would lamb.

Ann

[Andrew Fenton]

I bought a quarter of a kid (baby goat, not the other kind) yesterday, and am planning to smoke it soon, probably on Saturday or Sunday.

I've never cooked goat before, and am looking for ideas for a spice rub. My default would probably be olive oil, lime juice, garlic and salt, but I'm sure folks have still better ideas! What should I do to this kid?

[Reconstructing Dinner]

There's a recipe for goat tacos in the July 2008 Gourmet. It calls for braising in the oven, but you might be able to modify the ingredients for smoking purposes. Perhaps the chilis, etc. (sans tomatoes) could be an overnight marinade? Anyway, you can find it here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/vie...AT-TACOS-242840.

I'll be interested to know what you come up with.

RD

[Andrew Fenton]

Thanks for posting that, RD! I took some inspiration from the recipe and made a rub out of chiles, Cuban oregano, lemon verbena, salt, pepper, a ton of garlic, and olive oil. The rubbed kid is sitting in the refrigerator now; I'll smoke it tomorrow.

I love the idea of goat tacos; unfortunately, the kid doesn't have enough meat to really taco-ize it. But I'll bet that if I can get a whole goat shoulder or leg, smoked goat tacos would be really terrific.

[Reconstructing Dinner]

Good luck tomorrow. Please update on how the smoking works out. Pictures?

RD

[Andrew Fenton]

And here are some pictures! First, the kid on the grill, ready to be smoked:

(I smoked some corn, too, which is going to go into a salsa.)

It cooked at ~250 for about five hours. I wasn't sure at what temperature it'd be done, so I guessed that since the kid is pretty tender, and doesn't have as much collagen as an adult animal, 165 or so would do the trick.

I had pretty bad timing; it started pouring rain JUST as I put the meat in. But I persevered; here's the result:

You can see it started to curl up: not enough connective tissue? Anyway, here's the final product, with the meat removed from the bones and chopped a little (minus what I munched on, nom nom nom):

The meat is very tasty (and mild-flavored, not too unlike pork), but there wasn't a whole lot of it; there were a lot of ribs, which didn't have a ton of meat on them, and not as much shank and shoulder. So I'm going to go ahead and make tacos with it tonight. It'll be tasty, I think, but next time I'd probably buy an adult goat shoulder and smoke that: it'd be a more effective use of the smoker, I suspect.