Goat Country Goat Curry

The August sun started to set over the barren mountains of Northern British Columbia and I looked down at the yellowish-white coat of my first mountain goat and thought “what now?”. It turned out the answer to that question would lead me down a path that not only deepened my connection with the natural world but to my cultural ancestry as well. 

As a born and raised British Columbian I had always been fascinated with goats as B.C. is the epicenter of all things mountain goats with 60% of the global population and majority of Boone & Crocket animals coming from here. Unfortunately despite being steeped in the realm of goats, whenever I asked the old mountain men that I would usually go to with goat hunting questions about how they cooked them I received an answer similar to:

“put a bunch of rocks in the bottom of a crock pot, then the goat meat on top. Cook for at least 12 hours at 325 degrees. When it's done, you throw the meat out and eat the rocks.” 

This being the least funny and most overused joke in all of hunting I decided to start exploring less expected recipes to be able to properly enjoy my harvest.

While thinking about goat recipes I thought of the times I had goat before. Immediately the amazing goat curries I had while studying in India two years prior came to mind. Of course I had never gotten a chance to get those recipes down due to language barriers and a very busy field schedule. However I did have one person in my life that might be able to help, my Indian grandmother! So after years of not talking I picked up the phone and called her to see if she had any recipes that might work well with my mountain goat and by gosh did she ever! Not only did she have about half a dozen interesting curries and other dishes she wanted to make with it, it also sparked her into telling other stories about her childhood back in India and gave me a window into my heritage I had never had before.

Of course having your elderly grandmother who has Alzheimer’s explain to you over the phone recipes she hasn’t cooked in over a decade makes for some very loose directions. When it came to exact measurements they were few and far between, and cooking times were more often measured in “till it’s ready” instead of any particular unit of time. This was actually one of the best parts of trying these recipes was experimenting with amounts and cooking times and developing a sense of how the ingredients worked together and imagining my grandmother doing the same thing all those years ago. At the end of trying these I felt I had built a bridge to my heritage through the meals I had made. These meals highlighted who I am as a hunter and a person of color.  

Out of the recipes I was able to try (there was a goat head soup recipe I wish I had known about before I shipped the skull off to a taxidermist) my favorite is a slow cooked curry that I want to share with you below. However, the real value I took away from the experience was being able to connect my passion for the outdoors and hunting to my heritage by cooking wild game in a new way. I would encourage any hunter, new or old to do the same whether it be dusting off your family cook book and experimenting by substituting a mallard for the pekin duck or getting your strange uncle to show you how he used to cook squirrels as a kid. Bringing traditional recipes into the wild game space is something that is not only going to be delicious for you but make wild game cooking a more interesting and diverse place for everyone!

Now for the part you are here for grandma’s mountain goat curry recipe!

Ingredients

Vegetable oil

2 Large Red onions, minced

7 Cloves Diced garlic 

2 tbsp Cumin

2 tbsp Coriander 

2 tbsp turmeric

2 tsp Each:, salt, black pepper

3-4 lb Boneless goat cut in 2-inch cubes

2 tbsp Diced ginger

2 Sticks Cinnamon 

5 Tomatoes finely chopped

1 cup   Plain yogurt

½ cup water

½  cup Chopped cilantro

1 cups Rice (Dealers choice)

2 pieces Naan bread

Directions

1. Grind cumin and coriander together in a spice grinder, mix in turmeric, salt, and pepper. 

2. Place mountain goat meat into a large mixing bowl and add spice mix. Coat meat thoroughly in spices then cover bowl and place in the fridge overnight.

3. Preheat oven to 260f°

4. Heat oil in a large, Dutch oven over high heat. Add onions. Cook, stirring, 10 minutes until translucent

5. Add garlic. Cook while stirring, for 3 minutes.

6. Add goat meat. Cook for 4 minutes or until meat is browned

7. Add ginger and cinnamon then move stockpot from burner to oven and cover, let cook for 4 hours stirring every hour.

8. Add tomato, and yogurt. stir well. Move the pot back to the stove top and cook on medium heat for 20 minutes.

9. Remove 1 piece of goat from the pot; cool. Taste to see if it's tender. If it's done, remove the pot from heat. If not, cook for another 30 to 45 minutes or until tender.

10. To serve, Stir in cilantro. Serve immediately over rice, with naan.