Michaelmas goose with apples and sage

Name: Michaelmas goose with apples and sage
Yield: Serves 8
Ingredients: Salt and freshly ground pepper; Salt and freshly ground pepper; 2–3 fresh sage sprigs, plus a few extra leaves; 2 onions, chunked; 2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and chunked; 1 Michaelmas goose (5–6 kg, dressed weight)

Preparation info

Serves
8

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

A Cook’s Year in a Welsh Farmhouse

By Elisabeth Luard

Published 2011

About

The goose remains an obdurately seasonal bird, breeding in spring and ready for table no earlier than the first month of autumn. At Michaelmas (29 September) the bird is still a gosling; by Christmas it’s a goose.

Ingredients

1 Michaelmas goose (5–6 kg, dressed weight)
2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and chunked

Main course
Michaelmas
Christmas
September
Gluten-free
Autumn
Spring

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas mark 33.

Wipe over the bird and singe off any stray hairs or feather stumps. Pull out the golden fat in the cavity and rub it over the breast (save the rest for roasting potatoes).

Season the bird inside and out, stuff the cavity with