This summer we are experimenting with uses of ground goat meat beyond the classic burger. We adapted this lamb recipe from FEAST by Anissa Helou and it was perfect. We didn't have many of the ingredients but I'm reproducing her recipe here mostly as written, substituting the lamb for goat.
Serves 4-6
(our photos show a smaller portion, which fed 3 adults)
1 medium onion, quartered
A few springs cilantro
A few sprigs flat leaf parsley
A handful mint leaves
2 small handfuls marjoram leaves
2.25 lbs ground goat meat
1tsp ground cumin
1tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ras el hanout
Sea salt
Put the onions and herbs in a food processor and process until very finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and add the ground goat meat, spices and salt. Mix with your hands until evenly blended.
Divide the meat into portions. Anissa's recipe says 24 portions for kebabs, but we did larger pieces because we didn't have sticks.
Grill or broil on high 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until done to your liking. For our larger pieces we cooked for about 30 minutes total in our Traeger smoker at 325F.
Anissa say this is traditionally served with a tomato and onion salad and Moroccan bread. We had some pita bread in the freezer and decided to make a yogurt sauce with goat yogurt, garlic conserve (thank you Kazi!), chopped mint and a pinch of sugar. Although untraditional, we really liked the yogurt sauce and would serve it this way again.
We didn't have any of the required fresh herbs except mint, so used a lot of it. For the spices we had cumin, paprika and ras el hanout, and we added toasted coriander seeds.
There is at least one other recipe on our blog that uses ras el hanout. There are many recipes for this Moroccan spice blend, but the one available from the Spice House uses turmeric, pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, sea salt, ginger, mace, allspice, and saffron. We originally ordered this spice blend to make the apricot & pistachio goat recipe from GOAT by James Whetlor, but now that we have it around we find it frequently useful.
For us, most of the work to make this meal is in carving our large cuts of goat meat to get the meat off of the bones and then grinding the meat. We use the grinding attachment for the kitchen aide mixer and in this case we put the meat through twice. With summer grilling season here, we are carving and grinding big batches of meat once a week and wrapping it into 1 lb portions to freeze. This way we don't have to get out the grinder and clean it for each meal.
Happy grilling!