Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Ruby is nesting!!!!

I'm happy to report that one of our doe rabbits, Ruby is nesting!  Joe bred her a few weeks ago and she is beginning to pull her fur out and make a nest for her babies!  In a week or two, we should have a new batch of baby bunnies.

Rabbits were the first animals we tried to raise for food and so far, it has been fairly successful.  We have one buck, Max and two does, Ruby and Rapunzel.  Last year we got a few litters of rabbits and we have learned a lot about raising bunnies, butchering bunnies, cooking bunnies and how to get bunnies to mate (which is hilarious to watch, by the way...I'm sure there is a youtube video somewhere where you can watch).  I have been freezing their hides so we can tan them and make things with them (if I get enough, I can make a rabbit fur blanket!).  We had to take a break breeding them over the winter since we couldn't heat the area where the rabbits were (they are outside, but out of the wind) and now that spring is springing, it is time to start mating them again.

We have experimented a number of ways to cook rabbit and I think I have found my favorite way...Rabbit Noodle Soup.  Take a skinned and cleaned rabbit (no head or paws, but ribs and belly meat in tact) and put it in a pressure cooker.  Add chicken broth, wine, beer, canned tomatoes, raw carrrots, celery, onions and garlic to the amount you want for soup.  Put the lid on the pressure cooker and cook at 15 lbs of pressure for 15 minutes and let cool naturally.  Once cool, take out the rabbit and pull all the meat from the bones.  With the juice left in the pressure cooker, run an immersion blender through it to blend up any of the solids left from the vegetables.  Then pour the liquid into a soup pot and add the chopped up rabbit meat and frozen vegetables to taste (we like a lot of vegetables).  Once the vegetables are hot, then add egg noodles to taste (we like a lot of egg noodles) and cook until noodles are soft.  I didn't need to add much seasoning because I used homemade chicken stock and it was seasoned pretty heavily, but I did add some all spice and some basil.

One other good recipe we made with rabbit was rabbit pizza.  Take pizza dough and make a crust.  Use barbeque sauce instead of tomato sauce.  Chop up cooked rabbit meat into bite size pieces and put on pizza.  I also added some chopped onion to the pizza.  Then top with mozzarella cheese and bake in a 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes.  It came out like the barbeque chicken pizzas from pizza places but better.  It was excellent.

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