Delicious dishes can be prepared from a rabbit. But in stores or in markets, the carcasses of this animal are most often sold in its entirety. And if you do not plan to cook it whole, then you need to know how to cut a rabbit. In those cases when you yourself breed and slaughter animals, you will have to master the process of evisceration. All this is not complicated, but if you are a beginner, then spend more time than an experienced cook. Consider one of the instructions that is used most often.
Instruction, preparatory work
- First of all, you need to decide on a working tool. It will be preferable to arm with a rather heavy and sharp knife, preferably with a wide blade. It is also possible that something more powerful is needed - a special hatchet ax.
- The initial recommendations on how to carve a rabbit depend on the type of carcass that is in front of you: frozen, fresh or just hammered and freshened. Most often, the insides have already been removed, this is done immediately after removing the skin. But in the event that you have to do this, then start by cutting the peritoneum along the white line, bringing the incision to the sternum itself. At the next stage, we remove the internal organs from the abdominal cavity, having previously separated them from the muscles. At the same time, we try not to damage the gall and urinary bladders, because the taste of meat will be spoiled if their contents get on it.
- At this stage, the kidney fat and the kidneys themselves are left inside the carcass. Set aside the liver for later culinary use. The heart and lungs also sometimes cook.
- We cut off the head along the first cervical vertebra. Now we clean the carcass of various contaminants, wash and cut. If in front of us is a frozen, gutted carcass, then we simply defrost it.
- We proceed directly to how to properly carve a rabbit.Separate the front legs by turning the carcass down with the breast. On the sides we cut the meat parts. We chop right behind the shoulder blades, separating the front.
- What remains is again cut in half. On the line of the sacrum in the place where the thigh is attached, cut off the middle part. You don’t need to cut the saddle or back.
- Then we separate the rear legs. In the event that the living creature was very oily, we cut off the excess fat. Most often, the kidneys are left inside, they are cooked with meat. So we figured out mainly how to carve a rabbit.
We continue cutting work
You need to know that not all components of a rabbit carcass have the same taste. The most tender and delicious meat is obtained from the hind legs, saddle, sacral part. It can be either baked or fried. But the meat of the front parts is more rigid. It is often stewed, and the flesh is used for cutlets. But honestly, it is still a matter of taste. So we figured out how to carve a rabbit carcass.
General recommendations
There are some more general guidelines that you should follow. Immediately after the rabbit is slaughtered, you can not freeze its meat, as well as cook. It is necessary to withstand it for at least 12 hours in a cool place. It “ripens”, which will significantly improve the taste. It is also recommended to cook meat, and not freeze, as freezing and thawing destroy its delicate structure, because of which taste is lost. Do not keep the carcass for a long time in the freezer, because inside it the liquid freezes, turns into ice, which, expanding, tears the fibers of meat. For this reason, when defrosting, a lot of juice is lost, and the product becomes dry and, accordingly, less tasty.
In general, the more and better you follow the rules of how to cut a rabbit, the tastier will be the finished dish.