How To Cut Up & Cook Rabbit
Even if you are not a hunter, you can still enjoy rabbit. I buy mine whole and cleaned from a market once a year. They are not cheap as I pay about $15.00 for one rabbit and it only feeds two people. Read on to see the steps I take to cut up the whole rabbit, the light breading I use and how to cook this delicious rabbit. It is amazing served with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Ingredients – Plus chicken broth.
Lay the cleaned rabbit on a cutting board.
Using a large knife, cut the front legs off, these are the smaller
legs. Pull on the leg and feel where the joint is then slice there.
Do the same thing with the back legs.
Cut the back in half. I also cut off the end bones
at the neck and tail as there is no meat there.
Here is what my rabbit looked like after cutting it up.
I have never found organs in a rabbit when I bought
one in the past. I know there are two hearts here and I am
afraid to ask what the other four larger organs are. They
obvious put more than one rabbits organs in this rabbit.
Combine the flour, salt and pepper on a dish.
Dredge each piece of rabbit into the flour mixture, coating
them lightly. I don’t like a lot of breading so I don’t use egg
or milk with the breading, but you certainly can.
Add the oil to an oven safe skillet, like cast iron, and heat
over medium heat. (If you don’t have a cast iron skillet,
use any skillet then transfer the rabbit to an
oven safe dish after browning.)
Place the prepared rabbit pieces into the skillet.
Brown on both sides, remove from the
heat and carefully add the chicken broth.
Place the skillet into a preheated 350 degree
oven with a lid or use foil to cover the pan.
Bake for about 1 hours or until the back
legs are at least 160 degrees at their thickest part.
Do not over bake or the rabbit will be dry.
Remove from the skillet and serve. There is not a lot of
meat on a rabbit and will probably only serve two people.
It is delicious with gravy over top too.
How To Cut Up & Cook Rabbit
http://www.InDianesKitchen.com
Ingredients
- 1 rabbit, cleaned and rinsed
- 1½ cup all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1½ cup chicken broth
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Lay the rabbit on a cutting board. Using a large knife, slice the small front legs at the joint. Then do the same with the back legs.
- Cut off the tail bone and neck bone as there isn’t any meat there. Cut the back in half making two smaller pieces.
- Combine the flour, salt and pepper on a large plate.
- Dredge the rabbit pieces into the flour mixture until lightly coated. If you like a lot of breading you can use milk and egg to roll it in first.
- Add the oil to a cast iron pan (or any heavy skillet) over medium heat. Once hot, add the rabbit pieces and brown on both sides. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly add the chicken broth.
- Cover with a lid or foil and place the cast iron pan into the oven. If you didn’t brown in a cast iron pan, place the rabbit and liquid into an oven safe casserole dish with a lid.
- Bake for approximately 1¼ hours or until the thick back legs are at least 160 degrees. Should the liquid dry up just add more. Do not over bake or the rabbit will be dry. I check the temperature at 1 hour because rabbits are different sizes.
- Place the rabbit on a serving plate and serve. Rabbit is great served with mashed potatoes and gravy.
Share this:
Categories: Rabbit
They have a lot more meat than I would have imagined!
Only the back legs have meat but the front legs are my favorite part to eat. There is VERY little meat on the back.
What an odd collection of giblets! Unless, of course, it was a very special rabbit 😉 I remember my grandfather skinning rabbits with such speed! I guess those traditional skills, like so many others, have largely faded away nowadays.
Yes it has disappeared and hard to find even in the markets. My dad skinned them fast too and then he hung the tails in our back enclosed porch…lol
Yes!!! You’ve brought back that memory – the tails were nailed to the back of the shed door! 😉
Rabbits are commercially farmed here and you can get them in most supermarkets. My wife is a city girl and has never been interested in trying them 😉
That looks so delicious! In the Spring and Summer, we see lots of rabbits in our backyard. T thinks they’re so cute and I think about stew. I never thought about frying them. Mmm. Enjoy!
Edit: Frying/Baking them
I guess I don’t consider browning them part of the cooking process, that’s why I just put baking since that is actually the coking process but thank you. I have had so many rabbit in my lifetime because when I was growing up we didn’t have much money. My dad would hunt and fish to put food on the table. I have never had rabbit stew!
I think it’s fantastic your dad hunted and fished to put food on the table. That is both skill/talent and such love and determination. So admirable.
We also knew of wild asparagus and mushrooms and picked them every year too. Maybe that’s why I love watching the Alaska shows…lol
Yes very tasty but I can’t harm the ones in our backyard either. Thank goodness for markets!
used to like rabbit pie{ but after miximatotis spelt wrong no doubt} i left bunny well alone. Here we shoot them wild as too many in veg gardens .I had rabbit again and enjoyed it wild and free range .Good eating just as you do. Times gone by we lived on it in war time .Glad Boris has signed with EU a proper deal for trade which helps the world trade now. China stopped dealing food with USA at same time .Not so good but maybe Trump did that for you.
Well say goodbye to him soon! Thank God!
Popular in France with a mustard sauce.
Oh wow that’s anew way to me…yum!
😎
Thanks Sheree!
I like rabbit, I make it in cream. I’ll try your recipe
greetings
Oh wow that sounds heavenly! I love anything made with cream. I have never heard of cooking it that way, what a great idea Ultra!
You’re my favorite food blogger for a reason…
It’s about time to have some rabbit!
Oh yes good stuff! My 6 year old grandson decided he would try the one and only rabbit I bought just for me. Amazingly he loved it. I ate the two small front legs and he devoured the rest!
Lived on rabbit as a kid. Lovely meat.
I bet you have some great recipes!
Good tutorial, Diane. Especially the pictures for prepping the meat.
Thank you ❤️
I miss eating rabbit. I can’t find it over in South Africa. I used to eat it quite a lot in the UK. I used to buy it from the fishmonger and so far as I remember it wasn’t too expensive. These were farmed rabbits and he used to cut them up just as you have. The other organs are the liver and kidneys, and maybe the lungs? The kidneys and liver are lovely just quickly fried in butter. I usually made a rabbit stew. Very tasty and served with lots of mashed potatoes. I once bought a wild rabbit from a local market. I stewed it for HOURS and it still was so tough!
I have never had rabbit stew and would love to try it. My dad hunted wild rabbit when I was a kid and it does taste different. He used a BB gun and I remember chewing on the rabbit and biting on a BB! I do love the farmed rabbits much better.
I know a lot of people who get upset when someone mentions eating rabbit; I’m not one of those people. Being Sicilian, I grew up eating rabbit which my mother added to her tomato sauce and slowly simmered for hours. It was always the most delicious part of the meal. I’ve never seen this cooking method before but it looks very good, something I’ll have to try.
This is the only way I have ever had it. I introduced it to my 6 year old grandson and he ate the entire rabbit except for the two front legs! Your mother’s way of cooking rabbit
sound delicious too Nancy. I did lose two followers as soon as I posted this..lol
People always say it tastes like chicken; in a way I have to agree but I think it’s tastier. Good for your grandson; I’m not sure mine would eat rabbit if they knew what it was! My mother would lightly sauté pieces of rabbit in olive oil and then let it simmer for hours in her homemade tomato sauce. She often did the same thing with boneless pork chops; both meats gave the sauce a lighter taste and color and the meat was extremely tender. Sorry about your loss of two followers but it did make me chuckle. I had a friend who was horrified at the idea of eating rabbit. She asked me once if I would eat a puppy, too! Needless to say we never invite her over for dinner! lol
Oh wow what a comment! Good for you I don’t think I would have had her over too.
Is it hard to get the fur off? I really love this article! Thank you so much for sharing!!!!
Oh no-no-no! I don’t kill the rabbit, I buy it all cleaned and ready to cook from a market.
Oh my – not sure I could have rabbit, especially if I knew what it was. But it does look tasty. What does rabbit taste like Diane?
It has it’s own unique taste but is similar to chicken. I grew up on rabbit, squirrel (sorry), pheasant, quail and fish as we didn’t have much money and my dad hunted to put extra food on the table. There is very little meat on a rabbit so I made it just for me as I knew nobody else would eat it. Wow was I wrong! I only ate the two small front legs and my grandson devoured the rest! He asks for more almost every other day. We have rabbit in our backyard but I could never hurt them so I buy them all cleaned up at the market in Cleveland once a year. Terry told me I would lose you as a follower if I posted this…lol FYI I haven’t eaten squirrel since I was a kid…lol
Terry is funny Diane and I have to admit I gulped (hard) when I saw your featured recipe (especially since yesterday I did a post feeling sorry for a Cottontail rabbit that has made a home, or resting place, in a homeowner’s front yard and used that bunny’s photos in yesterday’s post). Thank you for not eating squirrel now. 🙂 Years ago, when I routinely fed the squirrels and birds in my backyard, we had a new neighbor moved next door … Jim was very nice and from Kentucky. He got a new neighbor behind him, an older guy than him, but also from Kentucky, and both of the guys were retired and often chatted over the fence. Jim knew I liked squirrels (even back then) and said “now Linda – don’t you be getting upset but Old Man Wyatt told me he is taking a BB gun to the squirrels in his tree and making squirrel pie out of them. He also took out the pigeons and made pigeon pie out of them.” That is illegal in our neighborhood to shoot off a gun – Jim told him to stop before he got fined. I used to ride to work with a guy who rarely bought any meat … he hunted and butchered his own meat and was an avid fisherman. He hunted squirrels and rabbit a lot as I recall. He bought me some venison stew to try as I had never tasted it before.
Terry’s uncle made venison stew that I tried and I loved it (of course). That would have made me mad if the neighbor shot in the neighborhood. There is a time and place for hunting. We could shoot them here to eat, there are plenty, but neither one of us will clean them. I’m happy buying a cleaned one once a year from the market.
I rode to work with a guy who worked in the building and he brought some venison stew for me to try. I didn’t think it was “gamey” despite him warning me the taste might not appeal to me. He butchered all his meat. He and buddies went every February to Georgia to hunt wild boars. I agree … no hunting in the neighborhood. We are not a rural neighborhood at all.
I always wondered what wild boar tasted like.
He never said Diane, but he and his friends went there every February and his back of his pick-up truck was packed with wild boars they got while hunting that week.
My last name is Coniglio, which in Italian means Rabbit. This could my grandfather!
Well he was a man with great taste! Lol
This looks delicious!! I have never eaten rabbit. I’ll have to find somewhere that sells them now and give this a try!
My dad used to hunt when I was growing up and we ate a lot of rabbit. I love it and hope you get chance to try it some day Morgan.
Thank you! ❤️
I will have to try this next time we have rabbit! We raise them for this purpose so I am always looking for good recipes.
My dad used to hunt them when I was a kid but they were so gamey tasting and I hated picking the BB’s out of my mouth! 🤣 Now I will only eat farm raised rabbit. I wish I was your neighbor I would keep you in business…lol
I’ve heard wild rabbits are not as tender. If you’re ever in my neck of the woods I can help you out! 😉