Experiment 242: Rabbit

[mishalak]

My parents live... a ways out in the country. They actually live outside the same town where I was raised and lived for about 18 years. They have a vegetable garden and that means wildlife comes to eat things in their garden. Including rabbits... If you are a softhearted person who gets weepy over the thought of poor innocent bunnies, look away from this post.

1 rabbit, mostly clean
6 garden carrots,
1 large onion
2 celery ribs
1 tablespoon of butter

1 cutting board
1 knife (at least, I used a kitchen knife on the veg and a larger one on the rabbit)
1 very large dutch oven
1 kitchen tongs
2 disposable rubber gloves

Cut up multi-color garden carrots on the bias into 2.5 cm-ish (1 inch-ish) pieces. Cut the onion up pole to pole and then once in half. Preheat oven to 120°C (250°F). Chop celery into 1 cm(ish, always ish) pieces. Put aside. Start heating the dutch oven over medium low heat. Put on disposable rubber gloves. Thoroughly clean the rabbit and disjoint the large hind legs and the back from the ribcage. Once very, very clean pat dry with paper towels and dispose of them into the same ziplock bag the rabbit came in. Ignore the itch on your face, no contamination! Put butter in dutch oven and melt, brown rabbit pieces one side and then the other. Add the piles of veg and lift the rabbit off the bottom with tongs onto top of veg. Cover dutch oven and put into preheated oven. Clean like a mad person to make sure Thumper does not get his revenge by giving you some dread disease.

And that is as far as this experiment has gone. I am going to cook to 160°F just to be absolutely sure.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

I'm glad you're being careful. Tularemia is rife in Colorado this year. It is why we don't feed wild rabbit to the raptors at the rehab center. (Yes, of course they eat wild rabbit when they are in the wild; but when they are in captivity they are already under enough stress that we don't want to give their immune systems any unnecessary challenges.)