Brined Chevon Roast & Pizza Sauce

The other day I took inventory of the deep freezer. We’re going to be harvesting meat soon, and I need to make room in the freezer for it. Besides meat I store bulk grain in my freezer, also my shredded mozzarella cheese, frozen eggs, and unbaked pies. I add peaches, blueberries, figs, strawberries, elderberries, raspberries, and tomatoes as I harvest them. Now it’s time to start turning those into jelly, jam, and sauce.

I decided to pull out the frozen tomatoes first and begin pizza sauce making. While I was in there I grabbed a small chevon roast and decided to brine it after it defrosted.

The next day I put the tomatoes in a colander to drain.

I started freezing tomatoes when I learned that peeling frozen tomatoes is easier than the boiling water and ice dunks. Now that I have my Roma Sauce Maker (photo of that here, plus the recipe for my pizza sauce) it’s even easier to simply run the tomatoes through it to remove the seeds and peels. I drain out the tomato water from defrosting first, however, to save on sauce cook-down time. I save it for things like – well, you’ll see.

Next I made the brine for the roast. I use the “all-purpose brine” from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (a must-have book for home meat processing.) I scaled it down for my small roast.

• 1 quart water
• 1/4 cup canning salt
• 2 tbsp sugar

Stir to dissolve the salt and sugar. Add meat and optional seasonings as desired.

My optional seasonings were a big handful of fresh cut rosemary and a small handful of fresh garlic. These made a nice bed for the roast in the brine. Brining time was about 4 hours.

After lunch I drained off the brine and discarded it. That’s not something I would ordinarily do, because my frugal nature requires that I use and reuse everything I can. But the brine was used for soaking raw meat which meant it wasn’t safe to use again.

I saved the rosemary and garlic to add to the roast for cooking. I also added one cup of my tomato water and put it in the slow cooker on high for about two hours, then low until it was done. Fresh baked bread and steamed carrots rounded off the dinner.

Here’s the embarrassing part. The finished roast was beautiful and I honestly meant to get a picture. But it had been smelling so good all afternoon and we were so hungry that I forgot about a photo until it was too late.

And the pizza sauce? It’s still cooking down in my crock pot, but it smells might good too. When it’s thick enough I’ll can it.

People often ask what goat meat tastes like. I don’t think there is any way to correctly answer that question. It doesn’t taste like beef, pork, mutton or lamb, or venison. Each kind of meat has it’s own incomparable flavor. I’ve heard rabbit, snake, and alligator meat all compared to chicken, but I’ve had them all and no, they don’t taste like chicken! Heck, even turkey doesn’t taste like chicken. The only answer is that chevon is a red meat and that’s what it tastes like.

Now we can look forward to some good soup from the leftover stock and meat scraps. The bone will be saved for broth.