Fowl Play

When is the last time you ate goose? Perhaps you’ve forgotten about the creamy fat that lies just below the skin, melting on your tongue like butter. Perhaps you’ve forgotten about the dark gamey flesh, so much more succulent than chicken. Ah yes, you remember now. Wait, what? You’ve never had goose? That’s all right. Here in Hong Kong geese are served in two different ways: roasted (siu ngo) or braised (lo shui) in soy sauce. Which one you choose probably depends on your taste, but both are delectable. Because it’s goose.

The humble goose is a tricky bit of poultry to cook and prepare properly. First of all, since geese have not yet been completely domesticated (unlike chickens), their natural habits of living in the wild remain. According to Wah Jieh of Yue Kee Restaurant, geese are a bit temperamental when it comes to weather. In the summer, they laze about and don’t like to eat because it’s so hot. So the geese-keepers coddle them with water showers to cool them off and get them to eat. However, in the winter, the geese are hungry all the time, so the rearers carefully control their food intake. The geese also get really fat during the winter, so that affects the taste of the bird when it gets to the dining room table. So if you’ve ever wondered why goose tastes different at different times of the year, that’s the reason. They are slimmer in the summer, and they fatten up for winter. They’re a bit like us, really.

The basic recipe for the goose braised in soy sauce, a dish also known as goose made in the Chaozhou (Chiu Chow) style, is to cook it in a mixture of soy sauce, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, sugar and Chinese wine. Of course, every shop has its own secret recipe, most of which have been passed down by previous generations. The nice thing about braised goose is that the braising process removes most of the fat, leaving just the fragrant dark meat and chewy skin infused with a mild taste of soy sauce.

Roasted goose, on the other hand, is traditionally cooked in charcoal ovens, which makes the skin deliciously crisp. The intestines of the goose are removed first, and saved for later consumption. The body is then stuffed with salt, sugar and shallots, then it’s sewn shut to keep the flavor in. The skin is also slathered with maltose to caramelize the skin. The chef will let the bird dry off for a bit, allowing time for the stuffing to flavor the meat. Charcoal ovens leave geese with skin that may seem unevenly cooked—that is, some parts are charred—but that’s because the nature of that kind of oven means that oil dripping down from the geese is likely to catch fire occasionally. Geese cooked with electric or gas ovens look nicer, but they just don’t taste the same. Have we whet your appetite yet? Check out some of these restaurants for the tastiest goose in town.

Yue Kee
Heading out all the way to Sham Tseng to eat goose may be a bit of a hassle, but we assure you it’s no wild goose chase (cue the sarcastic laughter). Nestled in one of the back alleys of Sham Tseng, on a smaller street off of the main thoroughfare on Castle Peak Road, this shop has been selling roasted goose for 50 years. The store has survived the construction of the Tuen Mun Road Highway, staying in the same spot. It serves charcoal-roasted geese; the birds come from their farm in Qingyuan, Guangzhou. The geese are roasted in batches according to demand, so be prepared for a perfectly roasted, juicy goose that is still steaming from the oven when it arrives at the table.
9 Sham Hong Rd., Sham Tseng, 2491-0105

Yung Kee
Named as one of the top 15 restaurants in the world in Fortune magazine, Yung Kee restaurant is famed for its roast goose and Cantonese cuisine. They have served celebrities, diplomats and other high fliers, but remains accessible to the public. Located on 32 Wellington St, they also serve goose roasted in a charcoal oven. In Hong Kong, only around 20 of these traditional coal fired ovens remain. The charcoal cooking imparts imperfections on the skin, so every goose is served up slightly different. Roasting goose in a coal oven is a delicate process, requiring a balancing of the goose’s crispiness of the skin and the succulency of the meat.
32-40 Wellington St., Central, 2522-1624