MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
I really like rabbit. I actually have a recipe for it, with mustard and cornichons, that I've been meaning to try once I find a butcher that sells rabbit.
I never have. Not to say that I wouldn't, I just haven't.
I wonder what the giant pink bunny on a hillside in Italy tastes like. What? You say you've never heard of this giant pink bunny on a hillside in Italy? Damn I wish I knew where to find a link to it - it's really big.
Many times, sometimes even by accident (frozen parts, coulda been squab, chicken, rabbit... turned out to be all three). Even fresh ones. I'm trying to decide if I should stop being a punk and just eat meat that I've shot and butchered myself. Of course, if I want to eat something besides rat, pigeon, dog and people I'm going to have to move out of NYC. But, yeah, fenceline chicken, many fine meals.
I ate bunny accidentally once. I was with my cousins at a county fair in Indiana. I should have known better, but I ordered a BBQ sandwich. (I mean I should have known better because I visiting IN from Texas, and there was no way the BBQ was going to live up to my standards.)
Took one bite, it was blucky, so I gave it to my cousin. Then I noticed that the booth was sponsored by the 4-H Rabbit Club.
Yep. All them show bunnies that didn't get ribbons? They ended up as barbeque.
Not that I recall BUT my son and I did once conspire to have a free rabbit recipe brochure sent to my husband at work. (From the website of a frozen bunny company. You know, the one that supplies your local supermarket with victims...)
togdon,
I am in neo-mountainman Edward Abbey (PBUH) mode these days so I'ma going say, that wasn't buckshot, it was rabbit or birdshot which is like a few hundred bb's, buckshot is like 6 to 8 6-9mm pellets in a shell. Everybody knew what you meant, it just always freaks me out to realize how nasty those shits are.
I grew up on a farm in southwestern Ohio, meaning I is a gawddamn hillbilly. not only have I eaten fried rabbit (mmm, beer batter!) but I shot it m'veryownse'f. pesky varmints.
togdon if you were spitting out buckshot (we called it double-aught in Hillbillyese), well then there prolly wouldn't have been much bunny left. I suspect you were spitting .22 bird or suchlike.
shooting it correctly, and cleaning it properly, just might have solved a lot of that.
No, but I once carved a potato into a sculpture of a bunny. Well, OK, it was a liberal interpretation of what a bunny looks like, but it was still identifiable if I told you want it was and pointed out where the ears were.
Yeah, I've had rabbit. There was a joint called something like Chubby Chicken N' Honney Bunny on the road to Yosemite. I stopped there on a family trip once years ago. As the name implies, they served two types of meat, fried of course. My brother and I had the rabbit while my sisters had the chicken and glared at us like we were pure evil. It was delicious.
I've had goat (several different dishes), alligator (in jerky form), and once tasted squirrel (under duress), but never rabbit. There are some rabbit stews I've heard of that sound really good, though.
In the Dominican Republic last year. It was in little bits, very salty, not good at all. Probably a bad chef.
Story time: 15 or so years ago I was working as a "juggie" on an oil exploration crew in southwest Wyoming. We unrolled miles of cable across the desert with little seismometers every dozen feet. We kicked the seismometer spikes into the dirt with our boots. After we had a few miles of cable unrolled, the other crew would set off an explosion in a hole they had drilled into the bedrock. The seismic waves of the blast + the data from our cables = a map of what was underground.
Anyway, it was a rough bunch. At the end of the day when we returned to the tin shed in an industrial park that was our base, one of the men would grab his .22 and disappear into the sagebrush. After a few moments there would be a little pop and he would return with a dead jackrabbit.
He would clean said jackrabbit entirely with his bare hands. He held the four feet tightly together and twisted, breaking them all off. Then he twisted the head off. Then he rolled the skin back starting at the neck, and pulled out the guts. Then he slathered the carcass with honey and mustard and tossed it one the barbecue while he showered. When he was clean, dinner was served.
He did this night after night. Even the other juggies thought he was hard core.
OK, I just don't understand how people can eat any meat and glare at another person just for eating meat that they find *cute*. That's just ridiculous.
Yes, My mother-in-law made it once when we were invited to dinner (surprise!)... But, yeah... I wouldn't order or prepare it myself. I've had alligator, snake, goat, caribou, and probably other oddish stuff I'm not remembering, but bunnychops kind of squicks me.
I came up with a theory a while ago. There's a huge demand for prime beef, such that the really good cuts all go to restaurants for $30/lb and you can't buy them at retail. I noticed that USDA prime lamb was readily available in the store and I figured it was because people eat less lamb.
So I figured, what about the stuff that very few people eat, like bunny, goat, ostrich, bison, elk, and so on? When you eat spring kid, you might just get prime kid - because no one else wants it. I like to eat a really tasty cut of goat more than just about anything. I like live goats too, they are fun.
I laid off the wild-hunted elk and venison, though, when I discovered how many of our native US furry friends have scrapie.
I've eaten hundreds of pounds of rabbit, our family used to raise them for food so we'd have rabbit 2-3 times a week.
LarryC's description of cleaning is a varation on the method we'd use. First knock dinner out with a blow to the back of the head from a 3lb hammer. Using a knife cut the skin around the neck and then peel it down to the feet. Remove feet and head with knife. Remove organs being careful not to rupture intestines. Cook.
Rabbit can be substituted for chicken in many recipes though it is much leaner so you often have to add fat.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
