ST. PAUL, Ore. — The geese wandering across the pastures at Champoeg Farm probably don’t realize it, but they’re at the forefront of a culinary resurgence. Although the birds remain “very niche” on American dinner tables, they’re gaining acclaim as a main holiday course among sophisticated eaters who’ve had their fill of turkey, ham and prime rib, experts say.

“A lot of buyers are looking to try something different for Christmas,” said Mark Anderson, the owner of Champoeg Farm near St. Paul, Ore.

The breast meat from a goose is “almost reminiscent of a steak,” offering an exciting alternative for cooks who’ve “been there, done that” with other seasonal meat recipes, he said.

His family farm has grown a variety of crops and livestock on the property since 1856, but Anderson began raising pastured poultry about 15 years ago, initially focusing on eggs and eventually shifting entirely to meat production.

Pent-up demand

Geese only came onto the scene about five years ago and represent a small portion of his operation, which is primarily devoted to chickens and turkeys, but Anderson has observed a pent-up demand for the birds that he plans to capitalize on soon.

“People call all over the country to get geese,” he said.

At this point, Anderson is only licensed to distribute poultry meat within Oregon but he’s working toward getting his processing facility registered with the USDA next year, allowing its geese to be sold across state lines.

“I think it would grow tremendously then because there are very few people doing pasture-raised geese,” he said. “The market for pastured poultry has grown significantly. Our thing has been to reduce the cost of pastured poultry, to make it more approachable to a larger audience.”

The average American only eats less than an ounce of goose meat a year, compared to 99 pounds for chicken, so the bird isn’t about to upend the poultry industry, by any means.

Relatively rare birds

Nearly 12,000 farms in the U.S. produce 100,000 geese a year, whereas 318,000 farms raise more than 530 million chickens for eggs and about 1.7 billion chickens for meat, according to USDA. About 97 million turkeys and 4.4 millions ducks are raised on 23,400 and 34,700 farms, respectively.

Though goose meat isn’t as popular as other types of poultry in the U.S., and likely never will be, experts say it’s returned to prominence as a Christmas dish among chefs and gourmands.

“People are getting more adventurous with their food,” said Jeannette Beranger, senior program manager for the Livestock Conservancy, a nonprofit that works to preserve historic and rare breeds.

Once a mainstay of the holiday table, the goose’s popularity waned after World War II, with the rise of large-scale commercial poultry production, Beranger said.

“People got used to cheap meat with chicken,” she said.

American tastes shifted away from waterfowl as a result, since goose producers were unable to compete on volume and price due to the longer time it requires to bring the birds to maturity, she said.

“If you sell cheap goose meat, you’re losing your shirt,” she said.

Uninspired culinary attitudes likely contributed to the goose’s decline, which coincided with a “stagnant” gastronomical era in the U.S. around the mid-20th century, said Greg Higgins, a chef who spearheaded the farm-to-table movement from his Higgins restaurant in Portland, Ore.

The lack of enthusiasm for goose meat was likely self-reinforcing, as people who were unfamiliar with preparing the waterfowl ended up with off-putting results, Higgins said. Overcooking tends to produce a “tough, greasy bird” that falls short of expectations, harming the goose’s reputation.

A challenge for cooks

“The reality of it was the cooks weren’t up to the task,” he said.

Roasting a whole goose can be disappointing because the breast dries out faster than the dark meat, which is why Higgins cooks these components separately.

Slices of smoked breast, a confit of dark meat, crackling roasted skin and a sauce made from the bones are then re-assembled on the plate, served along with salad and lentils.

“The whole thing comes out as a combination, a little sampler,” he said. “You get a variation in texture and all of it as a goose flavor.”

Apart from preparing the breast meat independently from the rest of the goose, people have found other ways of resolving the difference in cooking times, such as the Chinese method of slow-roasting the whole bird, he said. Geese also have strong culinary ties to Britain, France, Austria, Hungary and Poland.

“It’s really fun to have a celebratory dish like that, however people do it,” he said.

As culinary attitudes in the U.S. have become more cosmopolitan in recent decades, Americans have come to appreciate the richer flavor of duck meat, sparking their curiosity about geese, Higgins said.

“Public interest has grown,” he said. “The goose is another step further.”

Higgins said goose meat has noticeably gained traction in just the time since he helped persuade Anderson to start raising the birds.

“Now I have to sort of fight him for how many geese I need,” Higgins said, noting their pasture-raised lifestyle is a key benefit. “The bird’s flavor is going to be based on the diet and exercise.”

Anderson said he was inspired by the teachings of Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer and author who has popularized raising poultry outdoors and selling the meat through direct-to-consumer market channels.

The system fits well with the topography of Champoeg Farm, which has an abundance of rolling hills but scarce flat ground, Anderson said. However, the main advantage is avoiding the commodity market, in which the farmer has no control over price.

“Our niche is the pasture, the free movement. What matters is they’re out here moving around,” he said. “When you’re doing the self-processing and self-distributing, that’s more of the appeal.”

Raising geese

Compared to chickens and turkeys, raising geese does require some species-specific know-how, particularly regarding the removal of feathers, Anderson said. To ease the burden, it’s critical to harvest them in winter, when the feathers are fully mature.

“If you process them with those small feathers, it’s an absolute nightmare,” he said. “You basically have to tweezer them out.”

Waiting until wintertime to slaughter also ensures the geese put on as much fat as possible, which contributes to their rich flavor, said Beranger of the Livestock Conservancy.

“Goose fat is a delicacy. Liquid gold,” she said. “They don’t call it the ‘prince of poultry’ for nothing.”

While the taste of a well-cooked goose is “phenomenal,” feeding and caring for the birds until winter increases the meat’s cost — as well as the intimidation factor for home cooks, she said. “It can be really frightening to spend that much on a bird and not be sure what to do with it.”

For example, Anderson’s goose meat goes for $12 per pound, so a 10-pound bird may not lend itself to experimentation in the hands of an inexperienced cook.

For small-scale farmers and homesteaders, though, the lengthy time required to bring geese to maturity is offset by their propensity to make the most of forage and insect-hunting opportunities, Beranger said.

“If you’ve got a lot of grass, that’s a great way to cut down your feed bill,” she said.

Apart from serving as “lawn mowers,” geese are known as “watchdogs” because they’re quick to raise an alarm about predators and intruders, Beranger said. Since they haven’t been tamed to the point of fragility, they’re also unbothered by the Northwest’s often dreary weather.

“You’re not going to be fighting Mother Nature with climate,” she said.

For those raising other livestock, the waterfowl can clean up pastures by consuming worm eggs without succumbing to infection themselves, Beranger said. “Geese can be useful for breaking up parasite cycles for ruminants.”

Another advantage geese have over more domesticated poultry breeds is the ability to raise their own young, reducing the grower’s reliance on incubation or buying from a hatchery, she said.

Anderson currently buys his goslings from another producer but if he expands production beyond his current level of 150 geese per year, he’s considering lowering his costs with natural reproduction.

Though chickens and turkeys will likely remain the bulk of his business, he likes the idea of making pastured geese available to more consumers.

“If it was just about profit, I would have stopped doing this a long time ago,” he said.