The first time I brought home a limit of Canada geese, I honestly wasn’t sure what I’d gotten myself into. Kimi looked at the pile of breasts on the counter, then at me, and asked the question every waterfowl hunter’s spouse eventually asks: “Okay, but what do we actually do with all of that?” Fair question. Goose has a reputation, and it isn’t always a kind one. Cook it wrong and it’s liver-y, tough, and gray. Cook it right and it’s some of the best red meat a Wyoming freezer can hold.
I grew up in St. Louis, where food was mostly an afterthought until the military hauled me around Texas, the Mediterranean, and half the country before we finally landed in Casper in 2022. Somewhere in there I fell hard for cured and smoked meats — the deli counters of the world, the pastrami piled high on rye. So when I started hunting waterfowl along Wyoming’s rivers and reservoirs, the idea more or less arrived fully formed: turn these lean, dark, wild goose breasts into pastrami. Cure it, smoke it, steam it, slice it thin. It’s the single best thing I’ve done with a goose, and it’s the recipe that finally got my son asking for “the deli meat, Dad” by name.
This is a more involved cook than tossing a backstrap on the grill. There’s a cure, a smoke, and a steam, and it stretches across the better part of a week. But almost none of that is hands-on time, and the payoff is a tray of glistening, peppercorn-crusted, ruby-pink slices that taste like they came from a Jewish deli in a town that has never seen one.
Why This Recipe Works
Pastrami isn’t just smoked meat — it’s cured meat that then gets smoked. The distinction matters. The wet cure does three things at once: the kosher salt seasons the meat all the way through and firms up its texture, the brown sugar balances the salt and helps with browning, and the pink curing salt (sodium nitrite, sold as Prague Powder #1 or Insta Cure #1) is what makes this “pastrami” instead of “a smoked goose breast.” That curing salt locks in the characteristic rosy color, delivers the tangy cured flavor you know from real pastrami, and provides a critical margin of food safety during the long, low-temperature smoke.
Wild goose is the ideal candidate for this because it’s so lean. Domestic duck has that thick fat cap you want to render and crisp, but goose skin doesn’t render the same way over low smoke — it just turns to rubber — so we work skinless and treat the breast like a small brisket. Lean also means it can go tough and dry if you rush it, which is exactly why the final steam is non-negotiable. Steaming after the smoke gently breaks down the connective tissue, brings the meat to a safe, tender finish, and keeps it moist. Skip it and you’ve made goose jerky. Do it and you’ve made pastrami.
A Quick, Serious Word About Curing Salt
Prague Powder #1 is not table salt and it is not optional-to-measure-carefully. It contains 6.25% sodium nitrite, which is toxic in large amounts, so getting the ratio right is a genuine food-safety matter — not a place to eyeball it. A commonly cited standard for a dry cure is about 1 level teaspoon of Prague Powder #1 per 5 pounds of meat, but wet-brine concentrations vary by product and by brine volume. Always follow the specific directions printed on your curing salt’s package. Brands differ, and the manufacturer’s numbers are the ones to trust over anything you read online, including me. If your package gives a brine ratio, use theirs. Never use more “for good measure” — more is not better here.
Ingredients
For the cure (per ~2 lbs of trimmed goose breast):
- 2 lbs skinless wild goose breast, silverskin and fat trimmed (roughly 2–3 breast halves)
- 1 quart cold water
- 1/4 cup kosher salt (Diamond Crystal; reduce if using Morton’s)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- Pink curing salt (Prague Powder #1 / Insta Cure #1) — measured per your package’s brine directions for this weight and water volume
- 1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon whole coriander seed
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 2 bay leaves
For the pastrami crust:
- 3 tablespoons coarsely cracked black pepper
- 2 tablespoons coarsely cracked coriander seed
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika (optional, for color)
A couple of pieces of gear make this dramatically easier. A good digital instant-read thermometer is the difference between guessing and knowing — this cook lives and dies by internal temperature. I crack my whole spices in a cheap mortar and pestle (or pulse them in a spice grinder) for that coarse, craggy deli crust you can’t get from pre-ground pepper. And if you don’t already run one, a digital kitchen scale takes the guesswork out of matching cure to meat weight, which — as noted above — actually matters here.
Instructions
Step 1: Trim the breasts
Wild goose has to be trimmed well. Remove every bit of silverskin, connective tissue, and the occasional blood-shot spot with a sharp knife — that silverskin never breaks down and the trimming is where a lot of the “gamey” reputation actually lives. You want clean, dark-red muscle. Rinse and pat dry.
Step 2: Build the brine
In a saucepan, warm about half the water with the kosher salt, brown sugar, peppercorns, coriander, garlic, and bay leaves until the salt and sugar dissolve. Take it off the heat and stir in your measured pink curing salt, then add the remaining water cold to bring the whole brine down to refrigerator temperature. The brine must be fully cold before the meat goes in.
Step 3: Cure
Submerge the goose breasts completely in the cold brine (a zip-top bag set in a bowl works great, or a non-reactive container with a small plate to weigh the meat down). Refrigerate for 3 to 4 days, flipping the meat once a day so it cures evenly. Thicker breasts lean toward 4 days; thin ones are fine at 3.
Step 4: Rinse and rest
Pull the breasts, discard the brine, and rinse them well under cold water to shed surface salt. Pat completely dry, then set them uncovered on a rack in the fridge for a few hours (or overnight). This forms a slightly tacky surface called a pellicle that helps the smoke and crust adhere.
Step 5: Apply the crust
Combine the cracked pepper, coriander, garlic powder, and paprika. Press this rub firmly onto every surface of the meat — you want a genuine crust, not a dusting. Don’t be shy; the pepper is the whole point.
Step 6: Smoke low and slow
Set your smoker for a low temperature, around 200–225°F, using a mild-to-medium wood (cherry, oak, or hickory all work). Smoke the breasts until the internal temperature reaches roughly 135–140°F, usually 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on thickness. We’re not fully cooking it here — the steam finishes the job — but we are building deep smoke flavor.
Step 7: Steam to finish
This is the step that makes it pastrami. Transfer the smoked breasts to a steamer (a rack set over simmering water in a covered pot, or foil-wrapped with a splash of water in a low oven) and steam gently until the internal temperature hits 150–160°F and the meat is fork-tender, about 45 minutes to an hour. It should feel yielding, not springy.
Step 8: Rest, chill, and slice thin
Let the meat rest at least 20 minutes. For the cleanest deli slices, chill it fully in the fridge first — cold pastrami slices far thinner and neater than warm. Then slice as thin as you can, against the grain. Serving warm? Steam the slices for a minute right before they hit the plate.
Sean’s Tips
- Trim like you mean it. More than any single step, aggressive trimming of silverskin and fat is what separates deli-quality goose from the gamey stuff people complain about.
- Weigh your meat and follow the package. Match the cure to the actual weight of the breasts and defer to your curing salt’s printed brine directions. This is the one place precision genuinely matters.
- Cold brine only. Warm brine on raw meat is a food-safety no. Chill it fully before the goose goes in.
- Don’t skip the pellicle. That few hours of uncovered fridge time makes the smoke stick and the crust set.
- Slice cold, serve warm. Fully chilled meat gives you those paper-thin slices; a quick re-steam brings them back to life for a sandwich.
- Against the grain, every time. Lean goose sliced with the grain is chewy. Sliced across it, it’s tender.
What to Serve With It
The classic move is obvious and correct: pile it warm on rye with spicy brown mustard and a good pickle. But this is Wyoming, so I like it next to a scoop of Cowboy Beans when I’m feeding a crowd after a morning in the blind — smoky meat, smoky beans, everybody’s happy. It also makes an unreasonably good breakfast hash with eggs and potatoes. If you’re new to cooking birds and big game and want the bigger picture on getting wild protein to the table, start with my Wyoming hunter’s guide to the table, which covers a lot of the field-to-freezer fundamentals this recipe assumes.
Storage
Wrapped tightly, the finished pastrami keeps in the fridge for up to a week, and honestly it’s better on day two once the flavors settle. It also freezes beautifully: slice or portion it, wrap well, and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw in the fridge and reheat gently with steam so it doesn’t dry out. Because it’s cured, it holds noticeably better than plain cooked goose — one more reason to love the method.
Final Thoughts
Goose pastrami is the recipe I hand people when they tell me they don’t like goose. Nine times out of ten they didn’t dislike goose — they disliked goose cooked carelessly. Give that same lean, dark meat a proper cure, patient smoke, and a finishing steam, and it turns into something you’ll ration out of the fridge one thin slice at a time. It takes a few days, but the work is mostly waiting, and the reward is a genuine deli meat made from a bird you pulled out of a Wyoming morning yourself.
If you smoke a batch, I want to see it. Tag @wyofood on Instagram or Facebook — goose sandwiches especially. Now go trim that silverskin.
— Sean