Bugs! (w/ photos)

No not the creepy crawly ones.

Wabbit.

Awhile ago I decided I should cook rabbit.  I tried it as a child and when I found out it was bunny I didn't like it.  I am much older now and am willing to try things again.

I didn't hunt my rabbit.  I went to the butcher.  They had frozen farm raised bunny.  It was not cheap.  Oh well off I went with my bunny.  It got home and got put in the fridge for another night (It was frozen).

I looked up recipes.  Take one jointed rabbit.  I saw this repeated over and over.  I am a city kid.  Wtf is jointing?  I consulted the great Oracle Google and behold I was shown many many videos on jointing.  The most helpful was probably from ifood.tv.  http://www.ifood.tv/video/how-to-joint-and-prepare-a-rabbit-for-cooking

Well ok.  I can do that, looks easy.  I took pictures as I went to detail how my jointing went.  Now if you are squeamish you might not like these, however they are really no worse than cutting up a chicken...except it's clearly NOT a chicken.

 Here I have my hard won bunny.  The butcher took care of most of the hard stuff.  Skinned, no head, no paws.  Awesome.  Just a nice rabbit.

 She said to follow the line and once you have cut through to the hip, to twist off the leg joint.  Easy!  Ok I mis judged where that joint was.  Applying the twisting pressure to where the joint actually is, is far more effective than applying it to the leg bone.

 Ok.  Here we go now!  Starting to look less like an animal and more like meat!  I have both the legs removed at this point.  All that is left is the front legs and the "saddle"

 The arms are pretty simple.  They have no physical joint.  The float free from the rest of the skeleton.  Cut through the muscle and the legs are free.  The video says they are only good for stock.  However the recipe I have chose is essentially a soup/stew so I opted to use them.  I have also removed the right saddle at this point.  It went pretty much as described and just pulled out. 

And the finished product minus the carcass.  Two legs, Two arms, Two saddle pieces.  Now it looks like meat.

It was an interesting thing to do.  I have never rendered a body to meat before.  I haven't even really carved a chicken or a turkey after it's been cooked.

I think a chicken would be different mentally though.  We are raised on chicken.  We grow up on them, we know what one looks like whole dead.

The rabbit was new.  It is not something we see unless we go looking for it.  I know all meat comes from animals.  That we kill and eat them.  I didn't hunt  this bunny, or clean or skin it.  I did the very last part of the butchering, but it is still as close to an animal as I have been that I am going to eat.  I see rabbits everyday here in Calgary.  Alive, running around, making baby rabbits.  Wild animals.

Worth the experience to be a little connected to your food.  Hunters get a raw deal a lot off the time, but frankly those guys are more connected to their food than any of us non hunters will ever be.