PrintHow to Skin a Rabbit
Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes just emailed:
I thought you might want to see this video on preparing (skinning) a rabbit to cook, by an American working in a 3-star restaurant in Paris.
The idea of knowing where your food comes from has been a huge topic in the last year, and if you're a fan of wild hare, this video will certainly leave you with no illusions.
Past the jump, the footage. Not for the faint of heart. Proceed with caution.
How to Skin a French Rabbit [YouTube]
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3 Comments:
Also not for the faint of heart.
I've seen a rabbit killed, skinned, and gutted many times, and it was much quicker than this. I think the woman did this for a living, so she did many rabbits a day for many years. It was a bit disturbing. She killed the rabbit with a blow to the back of the neck. Then she tied the two front legs to a horizontal tree branch. A few cuts, and the skin seemed to come off like pajamas. She gutted it while it was still hung up. She gave it to us whole, and we finished cutting it up at home.
I think it's very important to see where our food comes from. In fact, one of these days soon, I am going to see a pig butchered by my wife's cousin, who lives just up the road from us. I'll probably have to wait for a holiday, as that's when the butchering is done. I'm not looking forward to it. When I used to fish, my wife would scale and gut whatever we caught.
Lou at 6:04PM on 04/12/07
Yeah. When I was a kid, I always watched my dad scale and clean the fish we caught, but it's been ages. Somehow, though, a fish always seemed more alien to me than a landlubbin' creature.
The rabbits -- wasn't there a scene in Roger and Me where they're skinning and selling rabbits in Michigan to get by?
I don't remember where it was I saw it, but I either saw a video or a photo essay of some folks in Russia butchering a pig and using every last bit of it. Very interesting. I'll try to find that link.
Adam Kuban at 6:18PM on 04/12/07
I think you're right about the scene in Roger and Me; that's probably the traditional way for a lot of cultures. But here (Puerto Rico) we don't do it to get by, we do it because we love rabbit. We eat it once a month when we can get it. As an Italian-America, I've eaten rabbit for as long as I can remember. We use to have to go to a Portuguese or Hispanic market to get it. Here, there are thousands of family farms that have been doing this for generations.
When we visit my wife's aunt, she often asks "Do you want a rabbit? Pick one". At least I think that's what she's saying; I don't speak Spanish. No charge, of course.
You're right, the higher you go up the food chain, the harder it is to deal with.
Lou at 6:41PM on 04/12/07