The Fork: From the Vault: Why do we eat goose at Christmas?

If you've got a problem with gooses, you've got a problem with us—and we'd suggest you let that one marinate!

Hello to you, dear Fork Frenz (TM)! 'Tis us, The Fork, here to say it's crazy how late into the year we got without noticing. We're slammed this week, buds, so we're reviving a little something we do from time to time when the time we have to time is not...good...time...times. What?

Anyway, we're so busy, so we're pulling one out from the vault—a 2021 Fork wherein we pondered the existence of goose on the Christmas dinner table. Enjoy! Despite our long-standing enmity with geese—both for the time a gaggle attacked our brother near a pond and because they’re just plain jerks—we recently got to wondering why the idea of the Christmas goose is such a thing. Really, though, stop a second and think about it. You probably have some reference in your brain to eating goose at Christmastime, though when we started asking the people in our lives if they’ve done it in the past, know anyone who has or if they’re maybe just thinking about eating one of those migratory assholes some holiday, the answers were a resounding, “No, I don’t think so.”

So then why do we have this image in our heads? Something about A Christmas Carol? Sure, yeah, that’s likely. But it also turns out the tradition of stone-cold goosing it at Christmas has ancient roots. We’re talking the Greeks and the Romans and even the freaking Vikings here. And there are numerous reasons behind this. Did you know, for example, that geese were plentiful and cheap and available, and that they do a really great job of fattening themselves up? Like the goat and its tin can, so, too, did geese pretty much eat anything they could get their beaks on, most notably grain.

See, back in the ancient days when people didn’t have stuff to do besides farming and making statues and boats, winds would blow grain around after planting, and geese would go nuts on that stuff, fattening themselves in an orgiastic display of lacking moderation and riverside honks. Throw in that thing about how they’re migratory (which means their little goose bodies are designed to specifically retain fat), and they actually wind up delicious when cooked.

Geese were also apparently used in Viking sacrifices to Odin and his assorted brood of gods and godlings, and those sacrifices generally went down in the winter.

Surely you’ve heard of geese tales from the mythologies of ancient Egypt and for Hindus. Fast-forward a bit to the Victorian era (OK, that’s fast forwarding quite a bit from the era of Viking kingmakers), and you’ve got a bird that’s still more affordable than turkey—a totally North American bird that had become pretty popular during the days of colonialism and things going back and forth between here and merry olde England. In other words, richies ate turkeys and the poors ate goose; and since there are more poors than richies during every time in human history, the story becomes less about popularity and more about volume. If we look also to Elizabethan England (as in Elizabeth I, y’all), the queen was apparently quite the fan herself, and pretty much everyone at the time liked to goose it up around Michaelmas, a late-September holiday that you either know about for some weird reason or just heard about right now that’s all about the end of the harvest for the year.

Anyway, the point is really something about how things poor (and therefore cooler) people did throughout time, as is the point with pretty much anything. Peasant cuisine always becomes cool later, even if it’s more often about survival than culinary know-how. Lord knows there are plenty of dishes that bear recipes all like “Dump whatever you have left in a pie crust and go nuts.”

In conclusion, some people still eat goose at holidays, and we don’t think that’s any weirder than eating any other bird. Eating birds is weird, but at least if you’re going goose in 2021, you’ll know you’re following in the footsteps of the very gods and mortals who paved the way for whatever, and that you should let us know if you’re planning on doing that this year so we can tell our brother there’s one less goose in the world that wants to hurt him.

BONUS FROM THE VAULT: Our Friend's Mom's Green Chile Stew Recipe

We still get emails from time to time asking about the green chile stew recipe we published in 2023. It is our friend's mom's recipe, and it is capital-G GLORIOUS. Find it below, along with an optional honey butter add-on.

Our Friend’s Mom’s Green Chile Stew Recipe

-Serves: 6-8 depending on how much you want to eat

-Time to make: A couple hours, maybe three hours, but it’s worth it

-Things to know: It’s freaking GOOD!

You’ll Need:

-15-20 whole green chiles (failing that, two or three tubs of Bueno in any spiciness you like and in whatever amount you like). This one can be personal, as in, if you like more chile, do that

-2.5 or 3 pounds of pork—shoulder works, but just know you want it to be firmer than tenderloin so it doesn’t fall apart during the process, unless you want it to do that, then do whatever you want. Chop ‘em up into whatever shape or size you like, though bear in mind that big ol’ chunky pork pieces are quite good in stew. We’ve heard the term “cubed” bandied about in stew conversations

-5 or 6 cups chicken broth, though mushroom or veggie stock might work—but then, there’s already pork in there, so...we say 5 or 6 because we know some people like their stew a little less brothy

-2-ish Tbsp. veggie oil, though we’ve learned that walnut oil will work fine

-1 chopped onion (you can do half if you don’t like onion or skip altogether if you don’t like onion), but, like, chop it into those small-ass pieces—you know the ones we mean

-2.5 or 3 cloves garlic depending on your taste preference; or, if you don’t want to mince it yourself, one of those containers of minced garlic

-1 tsp. salt

-1 tsp. cumin

-4 russet potatoes chopped into cubes, though you can do more or less if that’s what you like; if you use a smaller-sized potato, like a Yukon gold, adjust accordingly, ya buncha maniacs.

-2 cups diced tomatoes (canned is fine if you want)

-3 Tbsp. butter

-1 Tbsp. flour

-A pot big enough to put all that stuff in and cook with, plus its lid

-A smaller pot you’ll use for doing meat stuff

The Steps:

1. Broil them green chiles as hot as you like in your oven, but keep turning them regularly until they look kind of darkened to the point you believe you can peel the skin off with ease. If you’re skipping this step because you got Bueno in a tub, that’s fine and you can just hit step 3

2. Pull ‘em out of the oven and stick’ em in that pot of yours, though not on the stove yet, then cover it with the lid so they can steam in their own just-out-of-the-broiler heat

3. Toss that chopped-up (or cubed!) pork into that other pot on medium and season with plenty of salt and pepper (to taste, dammit!), then pop in much of your onion and much of your garlic and all of your veggie oil and brown the meat for five minutes or so—you’re not cooking it all the way!

4. In your big pot, throw in the broth and the rest of your onion and garlic. Add the cumin, too, and whatever spices you think sound good...like, we’re not realizing a little bit of brown sugar would probably be good. Bring it to a nice, slow simmer

5. By this point, you can probably peel your chile easily, so go ahead and do that, then throw ‘em in with the broth (or dump in the bueno) and leave ‘em in there forever. Bring everything back up to a simmer and let it do that for a good 40 minutes or so

6. When you come back in, smell the pot and say something like, “Damn, we’re really on the way!” Then add your meat and potatoes and bring back to a simmer for another 10 minutes

7. Add the tomatoes and bring back to a simmer again. You can add a little more broth if you like, it depends on your viscosity desires

8. Melt that butter with your flour while stirring a whole bunch, then add to the stew. Let it simmer until you think it’s all pretty much working well together and you can’t stand not eating it anymore

9. Heat up your tortillas (or don’t) and serve that stew, baby!

Making the Optional Honey Butter

We love this one because it’s so easy! Like, you just need butter and honey and salt. The End. Why isn’t this a staple?!

1. Soften as much salted or unsalted butter as you think you want by taking it out of the fridge for 30-45 minutes.

2. Whip that butter in a mixing bowl with one of those electric beater things.

3. Add as much honey as you think you want, though go slowly and experiment if you’re the type who has thickness concerns.

4. Add a pinch of salt.

5. Voila! You can chill it a bit if you like, which we do because then it gets a chance to melt on the warm tortillas. In tandem with the earthy, spicy flavor of the green chile stew? Magic.

Also 

  • We get that we've mentioned Tulsi from chef Paddy Rawal a number of times in the columns of Le Fork, but longtime SFR contributor actually went over there to talk to Rawal, and it's the first time in her 13-ish years of professional writing that she's done something food-adjacent. You should read it. After you've done that, think a spell about how we wonder if Rawal would be upset that we've nicknamed him Pappy Narwal in our mind.
  • We can't help but notice that about a bazillion local restaurants are out there in the social media-sphere talkin' about how they have gift cards, and we think that would be a great gift. Time and time again we learn that people prefer experiences to things when it comes to gifts, and we can think of no greater insight into a person's soul than to receive free food from a place they love. We'd be willing to bet that any place you love has gift cards, so start buying them now. You have roughly three weeks to do this up right.
  • Speaking of cool food gifts, we've recently learned about Enchanted Grazing Co., which seems to be some kind of non-brick-and-mortar charcuterie/educational outfit operating in Northern New Mexico—and we hear they'll be kicking off classes for things like tamales and biscochitos! We're gonna link the site, because we think it would be cool to give someone a tamale class gift, we really do.
  • Word on the street is that embattled Canyon Road eatery The Teahouse has added oatmeal back to its menu. Before we say a nice thing about that, we want to remind you that we think the entire city should be ashamed of itself for immediately attacking chef Martin Blanco's most excellent Phlippines-inspired menu (SFR loved it) and not just because we think there's likely a little bit of the ol' racism at play when people immediately hate foods from foreign lands—but we'll hand it to new-ish owners Brittani and Cole Campbell for bringing oatmeal back. The Teahouse is actually where we learned that whipped cream is a fucking brilliant add-on for oatmeal, and that's something we try to do when we're oat-ing it up to this day.
  • We know it's a bit away, but we wanted to run our New Year's Resolution by you fine folks. This is not food-related so much as it's just as saying that we want to start calling out any websites that use AI to generate content. Do you know how much time we spend putting The Fork together? We know that's a silly thing to say in a week when we literally just re-pub'd something from 2021, but seriously, it's so hurtful to us when people act like they're on the same level because they prompted a computer to do work. Boo! Slime! Filth! Muck! Rubbish! Booooo!
  • Lastly this week in local jazz, we wanted to extend a big fat CONGRATS to Ohori's Coffee Roasters, not only for being our favorite coffee spot in the entire world (and we've been to like 85 countries to drink coffee, all of which Ohori's has ruined for us), but for hitting the big four-oh last weekend. Yeah, Ohori's is 40, which makes us feel all kinds of ways, but it's still the shop we visit every single day and the place where the workers all remember us and are kind and the coffee is sooooooo delicious. We recommend most of the light roasts, but top three for us would easily be the Mexico, the Peru and the Ethiopia. If you go, tell 'em The Fork sent you. They won't know what that means, but we think it's funny.

More Tidbits

  • Eater-dot-com (being one of our favorite food-based sites) announced its 2024 Eater Award winners, and it's chock-full-o' cool restaurant ideas from around the country. Read it here and plan a trip, maybe?
  • The USDA just announced a massive recall for poultry products, and since we can't possibly know where all of you jamokes live, we're gonna link to a story so you can get into that better-safe-than-sorry state of mind.

A totally scientific breakdown of The Fork's correspondence 

In this week's print edition of SFR, SFR apologizes to Tokyo Café for not eating there a whole hell of a lot more in recent years. You been over there lately? It's incredible now!

Number of Letters Received: 29

*Many of you donated to local food banks like The Food Depot, and we think that's fab! If more folks donate and prove it with a screenshot, we'll enter them into our Fork Finds Something Cool to Give a Reader Contest! Just Google "The Food Bank" or "Pete's Place" or "Roadrunner Food Bank" and donate, dammit!

Most Helpful Tip of the Week (a barely edited letter from a reader):

"What about turkey sandwiches?"

*What about them, reader Shawn R? WHAT ABOUT THEM?!?!

Actually Helpful Tip(s):

"We like to give restaurant gift cards for the holidays."

*Woah, Jasper S, you totally read our mind. We swear to Satan we wrote that thing above about gift cards before we got this email, and we're hopeful it's becoming a trend.

Vaulted,

The Fork