Rabbit meat is recognized by all nutritionists and doctors as the most sparing, lean and healthy - even for children, people with stomach diseases and postoperative patients. The rabbit stew, cooked correctly and with love, retains all the qualities of the meat, while having a wonderful taste and attractive appearance. You are unlikely to find it on sale: canned meat in supermarkets is represented only by pork, chicken and beef. And not every plant can provide you with a decent stew. Either there is little meat, then there is a lot of fat, then the taste is colorless ... So the most affordable option is the rabbit stew cooked with our own hands. At home, contrary to popular belief, it is quite possible to cook it. Moreover, in various ways, and the presence of special equipment is not necessary.
Meat Preservation Rules
Before you cook stew from a rabbit, it is worthwhile to understand a few rules:
- Canned food should not include blood and tripe. Firstly, it will worsen its taste, and secondly, it will significantly reduce the shelf life.
- It is advisable to avoid rolling up the meat of old animals. Of course, it can be used, but it takes much longer to simmer. Therefore, it is not necessary to combine in one jar parts from a young rabbit with meat of an age.
- If you bought fresh meat, it must be kept in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours for the so-called ripening - then the homemade stew from the rabbit will turn out to be more juicy and soft.
- Cans should be especially thoroughly washed, dried and sterilized in a dry way in the oven.
- You can not add water to the future stew: it is prepared in its own juice.
Since rabbit meat is lean meat, in many recipes it is advised to add pieces of lard to it. It should not be salty and must be taken from a young animal, and in no case a boar. Otherwise, ruin the spin with a rather nasty smell.
The most correct way: if there is an autoclave
Anyone who regularly closes any meat, sooner or later acquire this device, since with it, processing is done without additional effort by the cook, and the stew from the rabbit does not spoil until six months. The carcass is washed, dried and cut into medium-sized pieces. In sterile jars, a couple of leaves of laurel, pieces of six peas of pepper, are placed at the bottom, and rabbit meat is already on the spices. Too tight to fill it is not necessary. Pieces can be layered with plates of fresh bacon, or you can simply add 3-4 tablespoons of lard to each jar. Salt is added at its discretion. Banks are rolled up, placed in an autoclave; the device is filled with water. The temperature is set at 110 Celsius, the pressure is two atmospheres. Warming up is carried out for a quarter of an hour, after which the fire is turned off, and the banks remain in the unit for the night. In the morning, the pressure is released and the stew from the rabbit is put away for storage in a cool place.
Pan cooking
Now let's turn to the ways in which rabbit stew can be rolled up at home, in the absence of an autoclave. Here it is advised to first soak the whole carcass in water for at least an hour (or better several) - to completely eliminate blood from it. After it is drained from the water, dried, chopped into pieces, packaged in cans in the same way as described above and rolled up. A napkin spreads in a deep pan, dishes are placed on it and cold water is poured almost to the lid. After boiling, in a quiet light, the banks should spend two hours.
Braised Stew
This time, the cut carcass is salted (about a spoonful of salt per kilogram of rabbit meat) and left to soak for three hours. Then the meat is placed in a thick-walled cauldron and stewed on the smallest fire for about an hour. Pea pepper and lavrushka are introduced at the very end. The hot rabbit stew is placed in jars, poured with the juice allocated by it, covered with lids and put in the oven. It should be cold so that the containers do not burst, and to guarantee the sheet, it is better to sprinkle a sufficiently thick layer of coarse salt. After warming the oven to 200 degrees, the stew stews in it for about an hour, after which it rolls up with other clean and sterilized lids.
Twist without pretreatment
This recipe for rabbit stew at home also uses the oven, but in a different mode. We act like this: soak the rabbit, cut the dried carcass into approximately equal pieces (not too small), lay it in banks, alternating with plates of bacon and pouring marjoram, turmeric, salt and peppercorns. When packing this time, you need to try to lay the rabbit more tightly. In the oven, the cans are set in the same way as the previous recipe - covered (but not corked) with temporary lids. Time is now allotted two and a half hours after the stew from the rabbit begins to boil. Roll up with new covers immediately after getting out of the oven. So that the jars do not burst from contact with the surface, they need to be exposed on a dry chopping board or on a towel.
Slow cooker in business!
The superaparade will quite cope with the procurement of meat for the future. To make a delicious stew from a rabbit, the recipe advises to remove the flesh from the bones and cut it into small, two centimeter slices. Salted rabbit meat is laid out in a bowl, the multicooker is turned on in the frying mode, and the slices are lightly browned for a few minutes. Then, on top of them are pieces of fresh bacon (it does not need to be processed beforehand; one hundred grams of bacon per each kilogram of meat is taken in mass), sprinkled with peppercorns a little, and the stewing mode is turned on for four hours. After the timer signal, the mode switches to heating. How much to stand on it depends on the mass of rabbit meat. One and a half hours are allotted to the first kilogram, another hour is added to each subsequent kilogram. Then the rabbit stew is laid out in cans, closed with ordinary lids - plastic or twisted - and hidden in the refrigerator. It is checked: at least two months does not spoil. Maybe it would have survived longer, but it is eaten faster than planned.
Unusual jelly
According to the rules, when a stew is prepared from a rabbit, water is not added to it. However, there are exceptions to every rule. If you have a lot of rabbits, then you can roll meat taken from the bones in raw form by any of the methods described above. But the bones with scraps of the flesh remaining on them are launched into the jelly. It is traditionally brewed, as on any holiday, it is disassembled, the bones are thrown out, and everything else is poured into half-liter jars, sterilized for half an hour, twisted - and in the refrigerator. Until the end of winter, such aspic will not spoil (if the family can withstand simple observation, not eating).