There are three ways I know about to really make great goat dish. All have one thing in common. Don't let it dry out and use lots of spices to combat any goat odor. The odor is concentrated in the fat and tendons so removing those removes a lot of the bad odor. Papaya enzyme is very effective in tenderizing the meat.
1) If cooking in a sauté pan, cut it thin and cook it rare. As soon as you overcook goat, it will toughen up. But lightly cooked goat meat is delicious and simple.
2) Roasts: Cook it low and slow, and don't let it dry out. I just did a whole shoulder in the crockpot with lots of herbs, spices and oils. Delicious! And when done, I could cut it with a spoon! We added some sweet potato and had a decent little meal.
3) sausage: Again, if the meat smells, then you can add spices to mask it. And it might be beneficial to remove sinew and any fat. If a recipe calls for fat, add pork fat. However, I did do about 4 lbs of sausage patty today and left lots of fat and sinew- about 80/20 meat to other stuff. After adding the spices it tasted like portuguese sausage with no noticeable aftertaste.
4) Marinate. As kids, we used to marinate and smoke our goat meat. It was not at all bad. It's also a good way to combat the strong goat odor and can help tenderize the meat.
Judging a good eating goat: in general, the wetter the habitat, the better eating the goat. Look for a goat with full body mass without hip bones showing. The better habitat will have goats with small amounts of fat on them. Goats from poor habitat will have virally no fat at all. Nannies and young billies will be better eating of course. Old trophy billies may require extra care to combat the goat odor in order to make them edible, so hunter beware.
