How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

[dmforte]

Background: I finished my Pompeii brick oven a year ago and I now feel comfortable cooking with it. However, I would like to start branching out from the pizzas, bread, and such that I have been making; particularly I would like to cook a whole young goat (kid). My oven is slightly larger than 39" in diameter and about 21" high at the center. I believe this should be sufficient for a young kid.
Question: I am looking for suggestions about how to cook a whole kid in the oven; how to prepare the kid, how to manage the wood (placement in the oven while cooking), what temperature to cook at and so on. If anyone has done this, or has relevant experience, it would be greatly appreciated if they passed this knowledge on.

[Chef]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

Don't know about a goat, but we are cooking a 16.5 pound pig in the oven this weekend...do you think it is the same??? If so I'll keep you posted, I'll most likely blog about it on Sunday!!

[dmforte]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I would think the dimensional issues and cooking temperature/technique would be similar for any whole small animal, if you could keep me posted and let me know what you do that would be great.

[DrakeRemoray]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I did a whole lamb, but I ended up cutting it up and cooking it a bunch of different ways.
http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f12/...lamb-1560.html

I know they use wood fired ovens to roast whole hogs for Porchetta in Italy.

I think that the consensus is you would fire your oven, remove the coals and wait for it to cool, then to roast the beast at some slower temp with the door on. I think if it was small enough, you could go start as high as 450? What do others think?

[Frances]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I think it might help to read through all the threads on roasting turkeys - a large turkey should be about the same size as a kid, shouldn't it?

Above all, let us konw how it turns out once you've done it!

[Chef]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I'm happy to report we did just fine with roasting our little piggy in our WFO!

Phil arranged her on a bed of sweet potato, celery, onion and carrots. We filled her cavity with some red bliss potato, placed one in her mouth to hold it open during the cooking process and surrounded her with a few more potatoes. He then rubbed her down with a blend of cayenne pepper, onion and garlic salt and SMOKED paprika.

The Wood Fired Oven was fired up at noon, and the pig went in at 1:30. The oven temperature was about 500F. The Pig went in uncovered to sear and crisp the skin we covered her with heavy-duty tin foil about ? hour later. We slowed the fire by removing some wood and allow the pig to cook slowly. She stayed in the oven for two hours we pulled her out and let her rest covered for about one hour, the internal temperature was 150F and will continue to rise as she rests. After pulling her out of the oven we brought the temperature of the oven back up so we could make some pizza it never got up to the high temperatures, we normally cook pizza at but due to time constraints, we went ahead with making 13 pizzas for appetizers. The pig went back in the oven after all the pizzas were cooked just to warm up Phil carved her and everyone devoured her!! She was cooked perfectly and was very tasty.

Good luck with your goat let us know how you maek out with that...I'm thinking that is our next food adventure. We had goat every easter as a kid it was always very tasty.

For the full menu (we cooked more stuff in our smoker) and photos check out our blog!

[david s]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I think it might be advisable to kill the goat before you roast him. Why not push him in head first ?

[dmforte]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

That definitely looks good, and that generally method of searing, then covering seems like it would be the way to go. Did you rotate the pig while searing? or was it possible to crisp it that evenly without rotating?

[dmforte]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

I'm not too sure about killing the goat before roasting it though, it seems like you might loose all the flavor that way...

[Chef]

Re: How would you cook a whole small goat in the WFO?

Dmforte:

No we did not rotate the pig just put her in the corner. The heat from the walls took care of one side and the heat from the fire took care of the other!!

Good Luck!