One perk of getting a whole animal for cooking is that you can cook multiple meals out of it. One perk of drinking a big-ass margarita at lunch is that I'm less worried about how food is going to turn out. One perk of trying to keep your mind occupied is that you can come up with several ideas. So today, I cooked a rabbit three different ways.
I looked up no information on preparing rabbit before I started, not even how to break it down, just to keep myself on my toes. I just kind of...looked at it and thought, "hmm...this looks like it should be cut here" and then started cutting.
Ultimately, I ended up with the two front legs, the two back thighs (I call them "haunches" because that sounds like the kind of thing you'd call them), then chopped the torso into three parts: the ribcage, the middle part with the flaps, and the ass end.
Preparation 1: I decided to braise the middle part with flaps. The meat was all pretty lean, so I figured that'd work out well. I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper, then browned it some in olive oil in my Dutch oven (pro tip: buy one; I got a ceramic covered cast iron Dutch oven for $80 at Kroger and it is one of the single best things I've ever bought).
I sliced a carrot long ways, chopped up half a large onion, crushed a couple garlic cloves, and tossed them all in to cook some while the rabbit finished browning, then I poured in my last half bottle of red wine (so long, Apothic Red!), some chopped radicchio, and a couple pinches of salt, then moved the pot to my back burner to simmer for the next 8 hours.
Preparation 2: I thought frying rabbit might be a quick fun thing to do, and I was right. I used the legs and the ass end for this part. Since the rabbit pieces are so small and lean, they don't have to cook for super long, so after I browned them all on one side, I went ahead and added my veggies in, too.
My veggies for the fried rabbit were diced radish, diced yellow carrot, sliced garlic, and spinach. I held the spinach out for a little bit after I added the other veggies. Basically, once the radish and carrot were cooked, I dropped in a handful of spinach and just kept the pan on until the spinach wilted.
I ended up eating one of the legs for a snack and it was lovely.
Preparation 3: I thought "oven roasted rabbit haunches" sounded fancy, so that's what I decided to do. I slapped those jokers onto my pan with some sliced red bell pepper and sliced yellow carrot, then I poured some extra virgin olive oil over them, seasoned it all with salt and pepper, and threw it in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes or so.
At 15 minutes, I pulled the pan out, flipped and seasoned everything, and threw it back in for another 15 or 20 minutes. Or maybe it was 5 minutes each time. I don't fucking know. It was a strong margarita. All I know is that that shit smelled and looked delectable when I pulled it all out, and I'm taking some of it for lunch tomorrow.
Extra bits: I still have the ribcage. I stuck it in a freezer bag and threw it in the freezer. I'll figure out something to do with that later. It seemed to be more bone than meat, so I didn't want to screw with that today; I'm still dealing with the memories of all of the bones, fins, gills, etc. from last week's salmon head and didn't want to do that to myself again.
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