oat is the world’s primary meat. Upwards of 70 percent of the red meat eaten globally is goat. Not cow, not pig, not dog (for you fans of gross-out food shows on basic cable). Goat.

By all measures, these bearded head-butters outdo white meat, too—like chicken. And they can even take on all sorts of fish—except shrimp. But that may well be changing, what with the sustainability problems associated with catching or farming those squirmy critters.

Surprised? Think globally: India, Thailand, China, Bali, Nigeria, Kenya, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Mexico, Costa Rica, Barbados, and Brazil. Goat can be kosher. Halal, too. In other words, it suffers from few cultural no-nos.

Except in the United States, where coy cartoon animals gaze out from every screen or monitor. Here, we like our animals with five-inch eyelashes; our meat pretty tasteless—if not cellophane-wrapped.

On a radio show the other day, Bruce was going on and on about spice rubs for chicken breasts.

“Well, they sure need it,” the host finally said, “since they don’t taste like much.”

They don’t? Has she ever had a pasture-raised, grub-worm-fed chicken? It has a slightly gamy, even smoky flavor. It tastes like, well, chicken.

Only in North America do we identify a neutral taste as chicken. Mostly because the chicken we eat doesn’t taste like chicken.

In the end, we’ve constructed a hall of mirrors: Everything is like everything else—which is really like a fat lot of nothing. Which all got that way because it was penned in enormous lots, was fed its own kin ground up into a tasteless meal, lived an unspeakable life of utter privation—and then, in a final indignity, has to be tarted up on the plate to attract any attention.

Not goat. This world-class meat flies under our radar, so it has managed to escape these horrors. Although there are enormous feedlots for pigs in South America, there are no similar nightmares for goats—this on a continent that consumes a hefty bit of the world’s production. In the United States, there are no hormones approved for goat production—and few antibiotics, to boot.

Put another way, goat may be eaten across the globe, but it’s still a cottage industry: in Argentina, on the Caribbean island of Dominica, and in the United States. Goat is small scale. Always has been, still is. Want to reduce your carbon footprint? Eat goat.

Which is all sort of strange, since these animals have been raised for meat for millennia, domesticated for almost as long as humans have made dinner together. Archeological remnants of goat farming go back at least eleven thousand years among the ancestors of the Kurdish people, in some of the oldest established settlement patterns known. In fact, studies carried out under the aegis of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences have discovered that almost every domesticated goat in the world can be traced genetically back to herds still abundant in the Zagros Mountains along the Iran-Iraq border.

Nobody has morphed the DNA of goats so that they have breasts so big they can’t walk (hello, chickens) or hooves so weak they are prone to rot (hello, cows). Over thousands of years, goats have been gleefully consumed by millions, if not billions—and yet have escaped the modern food chain.

However, the meat has been at the crossroads of some pretty important moments. Like that time Rebekah got her husband, Isaac, to bless the wrong son, to bless Jacob, who became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, mostly through a trick played with a goat stew.

You see, the old patriarch, blind and dottering, had called in his eldest son, Esau, to ask him to go hunt up some game for supper. “Prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.”

Esau deserved the blessing based on birth order. But Rebekah concocted a scheme for her favored son, Jacob: “Go to the flock and get me two choice goats, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes, and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.”

Theologians can argue the meaning. For Bruce and me, it’s this: Goat is so tasty it can change history and secure an eternal blessing.

No wonder we’re addicted to the stuff. But then again, I’ve always been impatient with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. I’ll admit I had a strange childhood—sometime I’ll tell you about having to ride around in the backseat of a Galaxy 500 under a paisley umbrella—but I grew up thinking almost all barnyard animals were for eating, even the bits and parts, snouts and tails. I thought hearts, livers, and the like were the tasty bits, saved as a prize for the only grandchild. True, my forebearers were stern prairie Methodists. They wasted not, nor wanted for anything. (Those two might be connected, you know?) But those ethics had nothing to do with giving me the inner bits. They thought they were spoiling me.

If this book has a constant refrain, it’s this: Get thee behind me, blandness. There’s a lot of research out there on how we in the developed world overeat dramatically and constantly because our food is so darn flavorless. We eat stuff that tastes like chicken (which, in fact, doesn’t taste like chicken), miss the cues to satiety, and so eat more—and more and more. Goat in all its forms is a remedy.

Still, for some it’s a hard sell. When we first signed on to write this book, I posted a big “Hurrah!” on Facebook, only to be met with a high school connection who wrote “Yucky goat” on my wall. I defriended her.

Nonetheless, her response fits in with goat’s history. What once could secure an eternal blessing soon became the stuff of nightmares. Israelite priests would lay hands on a goat and drive it into the wilderness, the sins of everyone vanishing into the sand’s maw. Jesus would tell his followers that the damned were goats, rather than the saved who were sheep. Soon, even the devil would be showing up tricked out in goat togs.

As Bruce and I were working on this chapter, we encountered that prejudice time and again among friends, only to have it evaporate in the face of an actual goat stew.

Because goat is savory: delectable, scrumptious, and lip smacking. It’s definitely not sweet like pork, beef, or shrimp. It’s got an earthiness that stands up well in deep braises and sophisticated stews—and even on the grill.

Because it has remained a cottage, clean-food industry and, I suspect, because we’re all a little tired of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, goat is fast gaining acceptance in the United States. In 1989, the USDA inspected 230,297 goats for butchering; in 1999, 463,249; and in 2009, it was estimated the USDA took on over 830,000 animals. Growth like that is unprecedented, especially in the midst of an economic downturn.

Part of the reason for its rise in popularity may have to do with the fact that goat is a nutritional wonder. Check out this comparison for hefty, 6-ounce (170-g) servings of various meats.

What’s more, it’s easier to get your goat these days. You can now find it at high-end grocery stores. You can also often buy it at kosher or halal markets—or at East Indian, Pakistani, Turkish, Caribbean, and Latin American grocery stores. Or check your local farmers’ market.

Then there’s the Internet. State department of agriculture directories will often list goat producers near you. Or check out sites for small family farms. They’ll ship the meat overnight to you—and the attendant mailing cost is barely noticeable, given the inexpensive but high-quality meat they’re selling.

Just know what you’re looking for. Goat may have gotten a bad reputation because some cultures prefer smelly old bucks for celebratory meals. For some Caribbean festivals, the stinkier, the better.

Um, no. Bruce and I are all for big tastes, but there’s no reason to go over the edge. Besides, we have a feeling the odiferous cuts are desired because they’re rubbed with habanero chiles and other incendiary devices. You need something pretty potent to stand up to that kind of burn.

In general, look for goat slaughtered between six and nine months of age. Much older, and the meat will start to go island on you. Call it the troll’s revenge. Remember the fairy tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff with the troll under the bridge? He let the two smaller, younger goats go in hopes of getting their bigger brother coming along behind. The bigger brother, of course, head-butted the old guy into the ravine—but the troll should have held his ground early on and took one of the younger goats, particularly the smallest one. So don’t be a greedy troll. Go for the young goat.

You also want to make sure you’ve got some marbling in the meat. There won’t be a lot because goat is so darn lean. Leaner than chicken breasts. But some marbling is preferable to none.

We’ll start off with the hunks, the recognizable bits.

Recognizable, that is, if you’re a real carnivore, someone who doesn’t just eat boneless, skinless bits of tastelessness. The hunks all look like ones from other animals: chops, tenderloins, legs, and shanks. Easy enough, right?

Actually, no. Goat is the Wild West of meat. Sometimes, it’s hacked up by people who don’t know any better. Or think it’s “just like lamb.” Most animals long enjoyed in European culinary traditions are processed according to standardized butchering practices. Not goat.

We know a small-time farmer up in our part of New England who raises goats to sell to us locals. Boy, have we gotten some strange cuts from him! Mostly because he goes at the carcasses with a hacksaw in his barn. We once bought a gangly hunk that included some rib chops (tender quick-cookers if there ever were any) still attached to the breast (a long-stewer for sure).

Our bad cut was indicative of a bigger issue. Most goat meat is the long-stewing stuff. The only exceptions are the chops (and only some of them), the tenderloin (seldom seen by consumers), and the legs (if you prepare them in one certain way—more on that in a bit). The rest is for braising or roasting. Goat is the original slow food.

So talk to your supplier. Where does the goat come from? Is it local? How was it raised? What is this cut best for? How should it be prepared? Do I need to do anything special to it? Because these questions make you a better eater. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s just ignorance.