Goose substitutes

The nearest thing to goose in flavour, fat and cooking method, and the only substitute that also gives you the rendered fat.

Best for

Christmas and holiday roasts, roast goose recipes with apple, prune or red cabbage, goose leg dishes, recipes that use the rendered fat for potatoes, confit

Duck and goose belong to the same family of rich, dark, fatty waterfowl and are cooked identically: skin scored or pricked, roasted on a rack, fat poured off two or three times. Duck is milder and a little sweeter, while goose has a deeper, more mineral, faintly livery richness, but the difference between them is far smaller than between goose and turkey. The reason you need two or three ducks is yield: both birds are mostly frame and fat, so a 10 lb goose only feeds six to eight and a 5 lb duck feeds two to three. Two ducks also roast faster than one goose, about an hour and a half against two and a half to three hours. Keep every drop of the fat that comes off, since it is the best roasting fat there is.

The practical choice when you need to feed a crowd on a budget, provided you accept that the dish changes.

Best for

Christmas dinner for 8 or more, holiday roasts, carving at the table, leftovers and sandwiches, stock from the carcass

Cheap, available and the wrong texture, so it needs help. Turkey breast is lean and pale where goose is fatty and dark, so the same oven treatment gives you something drier and much milder. Salt the bird all over the day before, or brine it, and leave it uncovered in the fridge. Rub duck fat or goose fat over the skin and work some under the breast skin too, roast breast down for the first hour, and pull it at 160F in the breast and 175F in the thigh. It will feed ten where the goose fed six to eight, which is often the actual reason for the swap. Keep the goose recipe's accompaniments, since apple, prune, red cabbage and orange all suit turkey.

The right swap when the recipe cooks legs rather than roasting a whole bird.

Best for

braised goose legs, confit, goose ragu and pasta sauces, casseroles and pies, German and Central European leg dishes

Duck legs are effectively goose legs at two-thirds the size, so use them 1:1 by weight with no other changes; a goose leg is a big thing, roughly equivalent to two duck legs. Turkey thighs are leaner and milder but dense enough to survive the same hour and a half to two hours of gentle cooking, so add three tablespoons of duck fat or goose fat to make up the difference. Chicken thighs will work but cut the cooking to thirty-five to forty-five minutes, since they turn to shreds if you follow goose timings.

The gentlest substitution, giving a fattier and more forgiving roast than turkey without going as far as duck.

Best for

holiday roasts, feeding 6 to 8 people, stuffed roast birds, recipes with chestnut or fruit stuffing

A capon is a slowly raised castrated cockerel of eight to ten pounds with much more fat than a normal chicken, which makes it the most forgiving big roast available and a sensible festive centrepiece. Compared with goose it is pale, mild and far less rich, so it does not read as a special-occasion bird in the same way, but it carves beautifully and everyone will eat it. Two large chickens roasted side by side do the same job and are easier to find. Rub the skin with duck fat or goose fat, and keep the rich accompaniments to compensate.

The route for two or four people who wanted the flavour of goose without a whole bird and its fat.

Best for

small holiday dinners, plated dishes with cherry, orange or plum sauce, quick festive meals, recipes with red cabbage and potatoes

Delivers the rich dark waterfowl flavour in the easiest possible format and in twenty minutes rather than three hours. What it cannot do is give you a whole roast bird on the table, and it renders only a few tablespoons of fat rather than a jar. Score the skin in a diamond pattern, start the breasts skin down in a cold dry pan over medium heat for eight to ten minutes as the fat renders, then flip for three or four minutes and rest to a final 135F. Save the rendered fat for the potatoes.

Buying only the dark parts of a turkey, which is the cheapest way to approximate goose's all-dark-meat character.

Best for

braised goose dishes, casseroles and pies, shredded meat for dumplings and noodles, budget holiday dinners

Goose has no white meat at all, and that is a real part of how it eats, so buying turkey dark meat rather than a whole turkey gets you closer for less money. The meat is denser, darker and more savoury than breast and it tolerates long cooking well. It is still much leaner than goose, so cook it in liquid or add three or four tablespoons of duck or goose fat, and it still tastes clearly of turkey. This is a good practical answer for a braise and a poor one for a centrepiece roast, since turkey legs are not attractive on a platter.