Author: Timothy Fowler

If you’re lucky enough to hunt snow geese successfully, you may well have a stack of lean protein that begs the question: What now? Goose breasts and legs respond well to the confit process. That can be done right after harvest and frozen, made ready to be used in the coming months. The confit process is simple: heavily salt breasts and legs overnight, and rinse and simmer the meat in fat for six to eight hours until the meat is so tender it will shred easily. While the traditional French tradition simmers confit submerged in duck fat, today that process…

Here are some simple steps to help select your perfect canoe and get up the creek with a paddle. Why canoe? Paddling a canoe can be restorative. The canoe is the original platform for commerce, travel and community development in North America. A canoe is an intimate space where paddlers get to know one another and come to rely on each other’s specific skills. The right canoe can be easily transported to water, and depending on the model, carried on your own or with the help of a fellow canoeist. Paddle strokes are perfected over a lifetime. They are strokes…

Wild fresh and smoked and cured ingredients create a peasant dish fit for a king in this jambalaya recipe. What is jambalaya, exactly? Want to start an argument? Suggest that jambalaya should not include shrimp…or, what about tomatoes? Some folks like it with, some without. Jambalaya, like its Spanish cousin paella, is peasant food. (Many of my favorite foods arose from peasant roots.) Jambalaya is a combination of cured meats, sausage, and any number of other things that are handy and delicious. Many folks believe that jambalaya is what happened to Spanish paella after it immigrated to North America. To…

Combine goose breast bacon and duck-fat hollandaise for a memorable brunch. Goose breast bacon is a favorite amongst my goose recipes.  Making fresh goose-breast bacon is one way to increase the variety of game-based ingredients in your pantry and elevate the value proposition of harvested geese. Value is a theme that I work hard to honor in my game processing. Transforming fresh snow goose breasts into brunch bacon is almost a culinary miracle. (And who doesn’t love bacon?) What follows are directions to make wet-cured, hot-smoked bacon. If you like the results here, it’s worth exploring the dry-cured process to…

Have you ever been to a carvery-style restaurant where the chef cuts you perfect slices of meat from a whole venison leg roast? When I was a kid, we went to a place like this for Mother’s Day. It was a buffet, but at the end of the food line, there was the chef in whites and a proper hat, carving each dinner a choice slice of perfectly roasted whole hip of beef. For my childhood self, this was the ultimate in culinary luxury. Because of this experience (or the strong possibility that my ancestors did the same thing around…

There is more to waterfowl than breast meat I love the taste of goose. If I was forced to choose just one meat, goose confit would be it. Last season our Canada goose decoys failed to bring birds in on a blustery morning with gale-force winds and sideways rain. But my son and I noticed the dugout where we hunted was seeing a lot of air traffic from mallards. We bailed from our blinds, headed to the pothole and duck-walked to the edge of the water. A raft of 100-plus ducks took to the air. In all the excitement, we…

Grab Your Axe: Let’s Make a Grouse Sandwich To make the best Italian-style grouse sandwich, you have to pay attention to a couple of details in the field to ensure the best end result. For ruffed grouse and spruce grouse, home is the boreal forest where we hunt bear, deer and elk. During a day of hunting there, it seems the time rarely passes without spotting at least a grouse or two. Often, we see more. I keep a 12-gauge handy in my truck just for grouse, but I’ve learned how to harvest them with my rifle without doing damage…

My freezer is full. All three of my freezers are full. This week, a good buddy wants to gift me a dozen freshly frozen spring geese. Next week, bear season opens. What’s a guy to do? Let me explain. Start Canning! My firm recommendation is to plan ahead and buy yourself a top-end All American Canner Pressure Cooker (in Canada here) and a few dozen Mason jars in sizes that suit your lifestyle. This will cost a few hundred dollars, depending on the size of the canner. I purchased the 15-quart size and have never looked back. Here’s a pro…

The French figured out how to make peasant food fit for a king – and this is that dish! There clearly is resistance to bear on the table. I cannot say for sure exactly what or why that is. Maybe the warmth my friends still have for their childhood teddies remains too close to their hearts. Maybe there’s some other Disney-esque emotional attachment to bruins. There seems to be a barrier to cross before getting folks to sit down to a meal of bear. Even big-deer hunters hesitate when I announce that bear is being served. Recently, when I served…