Delicious and simple recipe for goat

It’s not a common meat here in the US of A.  In fact, I can’t recall a single situation when I’ve come across goat meat in a supermarket, smaller market, foreign market, or even at a butcher.  However, the Baltimore’s Farmer’s Market on Sundays has a woman who sells goat meat.  And I bought it.  Previously, I’ve made some steaks of goat meat, and in this case, I briefly cooked up some nice chops.

I seasoned it very simply, with a good amount of salt, cracked black pepper, some garlic powder and a few dashes of chipotle and cayenne pepper.  Add a few dashes of olive oil, and a few dashes of some liberty ale, marinade overnight in the fridge, and voila!  Simply prepared and tasty meat.  I served this with some sliced and pan fried sweet potato and some steamed broccoli for a pretty standard red meat dish.

So how does it taste?  Well to be honest, neither these chops nor the steaks I consumed had any extremely distinguishable taste or olfactory attributes that were easy to pick out.  Lamb, if you’ve ever eaten it, has a very pungent aroma and flavor that is unmistakable.  Veal has a texture that is impossible to forget, and the other meats have their own characteristics, though by and large the 4 legged animals kind of blend together (pigs aside).  So what about goat?  Well, to be honest, these cuts were exceptionally tender.  While small, I found it easier to pick them up and eat with my fingers, eating them off the bone.  But the tenderness of the cuts reminded me of a top sirloin, as did the fat content.  In fact, any fat I saw was localized and off to the side, easily removed if you wanted to (I ate it).  It was quite tasty, though relatively unremarkable.

So what do I make of this?  Basically it means that goat is as tasty as beef, though perhaps a bit ‘lighter’ in flavor… and presumably a bit better for you to boot.  It’s not a bad meat, it’s surprisingly tender and quite tasty.  But damn is it expensive.  I don’t recall exactly, but we’re talking like $6.99/lb range.  Now,  I understand that it’s a small animal and people need to make up some cost/animal here (whereas a cow is a lot of meat), it’s just too expensive for me to afford to eat on a regular basis.  It was a nice treat, and I’m glad I could add this to my list of animals consumed during my lifetime, but I won’t be expecting it on the menu of any restaurants any time soon!