Rabbit Recipes

Although I manage and control a lot of rabbits, the sight and smell of rabbit had put me of utilising this fine meat when I got to the family home. I fell into the trap of overlooking the versatility that rabbit offers to any cook. Whether you are a foodie or like me, a lazy fussy eater, rabbit meat offers a perfect opportunity to test and improve your culinary skills. It wasn’t until recently that I started to eat rabbit again and this was down to two major facts. The first being some good friends (Steve & Marie) have recently been bitten by the rabbiting bug and detest wasting anything caught in their wild larder and the second was cost. Recently the country has gone into hard times and with having so much nutritional food pass through my hands I thought it was time that we made the most of it. I haven’t got the lifestyle, knowledge or inclination to stand in the kitchen preparing a meal fit for a king, life at the moment is too hectic, especially with little Gracie running amok. The beauty of making sausages or small burgers ensures that the best parts of the rabbit are ours and the rest is fed to the ferrets or dogs.

One of the advantages in ferreting with nets is the meat is untouched and clean, something of which doesn’t happen when the rabbit is halted by 32g of lead. Whatever way you chose to catch the rabbit, ferreting as a method of pest control has the advantageous difference over the more toxic methods of control, as the rabbits will be suitable as a food source. It is completely edible and selling them for food means £’s. The bi-product of ferreting is rabbit meat that comes from the lands largest free-range farm, our countryside. It cost us nothing but can be a nice little earner when you have a ready market for all your clean ferreted rabbits, although in the strictness of technical terms, we cannot label wild rabbit as truly organic because we cannot guarantee that the land on which it has been eating is truly organic land, registered with the organic societies.

Up until the fifties when myxomatosis changed how our nation perceived eating rabbit meat, it was a valuable commodity and regular trains were laid on to transport thousands of rabbit carcases from all over the UK to markets. People still eat rabbit after this disease hit our countryside but they were sold with their heads intact as a reminder to the buyer that they were indeed healthy rabbits and not contaminated by myxomatosis. In the present era we are always looking for healthier options, rather than the cheap, mass-produced convenience food that is turning our nation into obese couch potatoes. Nowadays convenience food has replaced the traditional family meal. Fewer families are sitting down together at the table to eat home-cooked meals where such meals provided an excellent opportunity for conversation and for children to be taught manners and social skills.  The problem of eating alone is that the resulting meal is usually of lesser nutritional value than that of a traditional meal eaten as a group where a lot of care and attention has gone into the meal. One such example was the Sunday roast but unfortunately our society is growing up in complete ignorance of what a healthy meal is and how to prepare one.

Alarmingly, with the rise in popularity and reliance upon convenience foods, it is of no surprise that the nation’s health is suffering, along with its ability to cook appropriate, nutritious food, especially off the bone. In the 1950’s, the average household parted with 30% of its weekly income on food; today it is a mere 10%. Falling into the trap of conveniently going down to the supermarket on an evening after work is turning the nation lazy. Not just content with purchasing meat produced from farms with lower welfare standards, this mass-produced food is lower in price due to foreign imports, another setback for the nations struggling farmers. The reliance upon eating pre-packed food and take aways accounts for 50% of food consumed in this country.

You may have noticed how the army of celebrity chefs and Jamie Oliver wanabee’s are packing the television screen with programme after programme, trying to educate the nation on what is a healthier diet. Rabbit meat is growing in popularity in the same vein as most game; especially as the popular press and the television celebrity chefs are leaning towards using such environmentally friendly, free-range product. Rabbit is once again in vogue and this signifies the true meaning of the ferreter as hunter-gatherer. Even the staunchest of opponents to what I do find it hard to present a sensible argument against the fundamentals of ferreting. Hand on heart I can justify the job I do by providing an environmentally friendly, non-toxic method of legitimate pest control and using the rabbits caught as food for both human and animal consumption, nothing is wasted.

In the UK, the majority of our wild rabbits are exported.  In the United Kingdom only around 2-3000 tonnes per annum are produced, the majority farmed and a further 5000 tonnes imported from China, Hungary and Poland. The reluctance to eat wild rabbit meat is still evident in the United Kingdom since the initial outbreak of myxomatosis over fifty years ago. This reluctance goes against the today's logic, as people are still eating cattle after BSE and Blue Tongue, lamb and pork after Foot and Mouth and poultry after Bird Flu. Ironically, in France where the myxomatosis outbreak came from, the rabbit is utilised nationally as a food source with an average consumption of 4kg per head in the population.

From Michelin rated restaurants to the small country cottage in complete solitude, the rabbit is once more being re-introduced to the dining table. Cost and convenience will always be the major factor in household shopping budgets but when it comes to nutrimental value; the rabbit ticks all the right boxes. Wild rabbit is not only kept in a free-range environment but it is leaner, tastier (with a subtle gamey flavour) and more natural than farmed rabbit. With a low fat content and a high protein count, along with being a good source of iron, phosphorus, vitamin B12 and niacin, the rabbit is a healthy alternative to the customary poultry, pork, beef or lamb.

As rabbit control grows in popularity, the availability of free, healthy, quality food is becoming more widespread. Nothing from the carcase is wasted with the prime cuts used for human consumption and the leftovers fed to the dogs, hawks or ferrets. The growing popularity in feeding BARF (Bone And Raw Food) to our dogs is ensuring that even rifled or shot gunned rabbits have a use. The thoughts and stories of burying or discarding the days catch on the way home fills me with horror. How are we suppose to look our opponents in the eye and defend what we do, if we blatantly waste food that many mouths would be glad to be given, let alone sold.

The respect and care of which we show the rabbit starts with the despatch. Clean, precise, effective and above all else, humane. Any undue stress on the animal will only affect its meat. Once the rabbit has cooled, the urine is expelled from its body to ensure that it doesn’t taint the meat. Its hocks usually hang up the rabbit to cool and air once despatched. It looks bad leaving them in a pile on top of each other as this will result in a poor quality carcase. To receive top dollar they must be in prime condition, something of which in early season needs a lot of consideration. With the warming in our climate, the flies are often rampant well into the winter and flyblown rabbits will turn away potential and regular customers. A simple sack or fly proof bag will be sufficient in keeping the flies at bay until the time comes to gut and skin them.

The rabbit is best gutted and skinned whilst it is still warm as the skin separates easier and the guts will not have the time to bloat or break thus contaminating the meat. The rabbit is prepared almost straight away unlike hares that are usually hung for a while to strengthen the flavour of the meat.

Gutting and skinning a rabbit is fairly straightforward but before you do this you must remember to expel the urine from the rabbit if it has not already been done. Once the rabbit is dry, paunch or gut it. To do this, carefully insert the tip of a very sharp knife under the fur and stomach skin and slide from the rear of the abdomen to between the front legs. Many put their hands in and pull out the contents, I place a knife under and flick the contents out, thus avoiding the mess on your hands just in case you have no means of washing them afterwards. If you don’t want the rabbits lingering scent on your hands, disposable latex gloves are readily available and cheap to buy.

Once paunched, remove each leg with a cleaver, secateurs or sharp knife at the joint. Separate the fur and muscle covering the gut from the skin (it comes away quite easily).  Continue to do this until you work your way round to the back of the rabbit. Then pull the skin over the back legs as if taking off a sock; the tail will be dealt with later. Once over the back legs and free, pull the skin forward and ease over each front leg. The skin (fur) that is left is pulled forward exposing the neck. Either skin the head or decapitate it. Remove the tail, anal glands and any remains organs running through the hips. Once you are happy with the finished article, wipe or wash the carcase and your hands under running water in preparation to joint and cook. Remember food poisoning is preventable; you should clean your hands and surfaces thoroughly before and after cooking. Avoid contamination as food poisoning from cooked food often occurs as a result of cross-contamination from raw foods.

On my travels I have been inundated with requests to reproduce an article that was written by Marie Taylor, head chef of the Taylor household.

© Copyright Pakefield Ferrets 2008