Rabbit dinner
Ever since Shannon
shared some of his rabbit-raising adventures, I've been wanting to
taste rabbit meat. So I was thrilled when a frozen rabbit
showed up on my door step, courtesy of my cousin-in-law's mother,
who had the rabbit given to her in exchange for free legal
services.
I didn't know
anything about the rabbit --- was it young or old; wild-caught or
farm-raised? So I opted to slow cook it in a Dutch oven at
300 degrees for ninety minutes to ensure palatability. On
Mark's advice, I first marinated the meat in teriyaki sauce (which
I should have done with our failed
squirrel taste test).
The result?
Delicious! The rabbit came parted out, and Mark and I shared
pieces of what would be the breast and wing on a chicken.
Both tasted very much like the relevant parts of a chicken, in
fact, although I thought the rabbit foreleg was much better than
any chicken wing I've ever eaten --- moister and richer in
flavor. The aroma while cooking was also enticing, and I
can't wait to make a broth out of the bones.
That one rabbit
created quite a lot of meat. We've probably got enough left
for another three or four meals for the two of us. While
we're not adding new livestock to our farm anytime soon, this
taste test suggests that rabbits could definitely be on our
culinary list if we found a good source.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I killed and cleaned my first ground squirrel yesterday and it is waiting in an ice box for me to figure out how to prepare it. Everyone around here says ground squirrels aren't as tasty as grey squirrels, but they are what we have and are what's been eating the garden (along with deer and elk.)
I think this must be a young one because it is quite a bit smaller than some I've seen running around. Beautiful, healthy liver, so I'm guessing I won't keel over if I cook it up. My parents are coming to dinner, so I was thinking of pan frying it for the first try. I don't know if I'm hoping there will be more or not.
By coincidence I just wrote a post about processing my rabbits:
http://green-change.com/2013/08/27/processing-meat-rabbits/
We mostly make stews, or dishes like curry. With the next batch I'm going to try more frying and grilling. I've found you can pretty much substitute rabbit for chicken in any recipe.
The nice thing about meat rabbits is that they're much faster and easier to process than chickens. They also grow out faster, unless you opt for the freaky Cornish Cross meat birds.
Rabbit meat is seen as a bit of a specialty meat around here (Australia) - selling in butchers for around $20 for a small (0.7-1.2 kg dressed) wild one, up to $35 for a large (1.8-2.0 kg dressed) farmed one. You can also get a good price for live rabbits as meat breeders or pets, although it does take some delicate diplomacy when dealing with pet-buyers as they're often horrified at the thought of you eating rabbits!
I just posted about my first experience processing rabbits, as well. Now that I've got a fresh bunny in the freezer, I'm not exactly sure what to do with it.
www.raisingants.com/2013/08/26/butchering-rabbits-and-killing-innocence/
The dutch oven sounds like a safe first attempt. Could you share some more details on how you cooked it? I tend to be more of a recipe guy than a natural when it comes to cooking.
Thanks for all your posts. I get a lot of encouragement from your site.
Ant Farm --- Hmmm, a recipe, huh? If I remember right, I put the thawed rabbit in the Dutch oven and poured about a third of a bottle of teriyaki sauce over it. I brushed the teriyaki sauce to evenly cover the meat, put the whole thing in the fridge, then flipped the meat over and brushed it again about an hour later. After another hour, I put it in a 300 degree oven with the lid on and cooked for 90 minutes, probably taking it out to brush the juices over the meat and flip them around two or three times in the middle. I figured it was done when the meat started to pull away from the ends of the leg bones.
What I can't remember is whether I added anything extra to the marinade. Things I might have added, but don't recall adding, include a bit of salt (but I often figure teriyaki sauce is salty enough by itself), pepper (ditto), and balsamic vinegar (which I sometimes add to cut the sweet of the teriyaki sauce). I think I didn't add any of that, though, and kept it really simple.
Good luck with eating up your first bunny!