Primal Eats

This would be a goat spine

Well kids, I certainly had the most primal meal of my life tonight.  Not the meat itself, but the 'cut' I guess you'd say.  In addition to being extremely nutritious and very delicious, I'm learning all about the anatomy of the goat I purchased in the spring.  The way this animal was processed was very different from the quarter buffalo and cow that I've previously had.  Those two were pretty much cut up and packaged much like you would see similar stuff for sale in a market or butchers shop.  The goat, however, was essentially just cut up and wrapped.  I guess that's a nice way of saying that there's bones, and cartilage, and ligaments, and skin, and fat everywhere.  And I've been diggin it! (This probably does explain why it was so much cheaper too).

Lots of bones and bits

So yesterday I thawed out a big hunkin chunk of meat labeled 'goat roast', and this morning at seven thirty I put salt and pepper on it, placed it in a cheap aluminum pan, covered it with aluminum, and set the oven at 225 F.  Ten and a half hours later I pulled that baby out and, voila, meat heaven.  Now, as you know, I'm not the food blogging type so I didn't get any before pics, or even any when it came out perfectly, pull of the bone(s), succulent.  I didn't get the idea to even write about it until I became fascinated while pulling all of the meat off.  One thing I've learned from having some pretty big hunks of this goat to deal with is to cook the whole thing low and slow, and take all of the meat off while its still nice and hot.  With the buffalo and cow, the cuts were so small that I would be thawing out meat for one, maybe two meals at a time.  I learned the hard way with the goat that I couldn't thaw big cuts of meat out and try to cut them up before I cooked them each day.  That is to say, it is much, much harder to get the meat off the bones this way.  Lesson learned.

Lots of meat from the 'roast'

Not much to say in the taste department.  It is delicious.  End of story.  But, as you can see from the pics, there is so much more than just meat there.  Tons of fat of course.  I keep a lot of the fat, but I found out the inconvenient way that I can overdue it on the goat fat (at one meal at least).  I had two chops the other night and ate all of the fat with them.  Oh boy, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep cause my gut was keeping my brain awake.  Not a 'sit like a rock' in my gut kind of feeling, just a - hey, buddy, you ate WAY too much fat there and you ain't digesting it all.  Not to worry, I eventually nodded off and slept in an extra hour to compensate.  Okay, where was I, oh right, much more than meat.  That reminds me, I guess I didn't really know that 'chops' were the meat right next to the spine until I had the 'full' chops from this goat.  In other words, the whole spinal disc from the goat was intact.  I can't wait to make broth from that stuff (and all of the goat bones really).  There was some white stuff right in the center of the spinal disc that I at too, kinda reminded me of bone marrow, only not as oily.  No idea what that stuff was, but hey, when you get the whole animal, might as well try it all.  Um, I got sidetracked again.  Right, anyway, the thing is that it's been way cool getting to eat the whole animal like this.  Even though I didn't hunt the animal down and all, it kind of makes me think more about what I'm actually eating, or make that, who I'm actually eating.  I have a friend or two who won't eat any of the goat with me because, well because it was a goat, but the way I look at it, it's the cycle of life.  And tearing apart the ribs that are still attached to the spine just makes the whole experience all the more grounding  - if that makes any sense.

Don't waste this stuff!