I cooked the absolute best cottontail in my life recently that was coated in spiced Bobs Red Mill Paleo baking flour and baked for hours. I almost tossed the three rabbits in the woods but decided to give it one more shot and I am glad I did, they are thick this year and after my girlfriends garden and flour beds.

The question is I also like deep fried squirrel and rabbet but generally it's tough.

I can think of two option to tenderize, boil and pressure cook.

Any tips regarding one method over the other and suggestions for the time for each method?

TIA

Braise don’t boil.

Crock pot

Braise or crock pot before frying?

I always seasoned mine then browned mine in a pan or on the charcoal grill before braising in the oven in whatever braising liquid and vegetables I was cooking with them. I usually ladled the stew over rice, polenta or mashed potatoes

I dredge my rabbit in egg yolk, coat with bread crumbs, and brown in about 4 tablespoons of butter.
Doesn’t take long.
Remove from skillet and set aside.
Pour a jar of gravy and cup of water in skillet, put rabbit back in.
Simmer for about 45 minutes with lid on.
You can even throw in some mushrooms if you wish.

This is a variation of a recipe for rabbit fricassee that I picked up off of a channel called Townsends.
It’s all 18th century colonial cooking.

Rabbit Confit

I routinely pressure cook squirrel before frying to tenderize it. Twenty minutes in our small pressure cooker usually renders even older, tougher squirrels tender enough to almost fall off the bone. Just make sure to add enough water to prevent it from boiling off and burning the meat. Once cooled enough to handle, I drop in seasoned flour then egg wash and back in the flour. A hot skillet with a little oil for two to three minutes per side to brown the them. Afterwards, I usually through some of the left over flour into the skillet and then add the broth from the pressure cooker to make a gravy. Don't know why that wouldn't work well for rabbit too, just might have to experiment with the time in the cooker.

Just remember theres no fat on a rabbit...any recipe you need to add moisture or it's going to be dry ....time is also needed to brake down the muscle fibers to make it tender....

Cooked up 3 rabbits last winter. Used an Insta-pot for an hour, deboned them, and then made rabbit stew. Was a big hit at work with my co-workers.

Late teens and twenties, I had a dutchoven for overnight hunting fishing trips usually with my brother, we'd shoot a couple rabbits on the way in and cook them in the pot with potatoes and onion.

One year deer season our BIL wanted to try hunting, he was insistent on bringing his own food, all canned goods, he planned every meal out. We were like... ok... 6 hour drive into a very rough spot, had to go into New Mexico and then back in Az just to access it... townie food was not an option.

Afternoon before opening day we shot some rabbits around camp, skinned and put them on ice. Every meal we'd offer our BIL some of our food, nope he was stubborn, just his canned stuff.

Second day I got the dutchoven out, quartered the rabbits, added the stuff and started it before the afternoon hunt. When we got back that evening brother and I ate our rabbit. BIL was struggling with his canned chili or whatever...

There's a half pot of rabbit there, might as well eat it... no... ok suit yourself... after awhile, well maybe just a bite... once he took a bite he wolfed it down.

We teased the chit out of him for years about that rabbit.

Kent

Make sure the rabbit fresh. VERY fresh.

Laughin !!!

I pressure cook mine in some seasonings for about 10 minutes and then flour them up and fry them for about another 15 to 20 minutes.


Yum Yum

I ate a lot of Cottontails as a kid. My Mom just fried them and I really like them. When my boys were kids I would take them out to get a few Cottontails and I fried them just like my Mom did. For some reason they weren't as good.
The last one we shot, had fleas. Never shot one again!

You don't eat the skin.

The fleas stay on the skin.

I don't think I've seen a rabbit that didn't have flees. The good news is that you can have em skinned long before the flees realize it's time to bail.

Been to 2 wild rabbit dinners in the last few months. They crock pot first, then bread & fry.

You guys have given me some great ideas for cooking rabbit. Haven't hunted rabbits for a while, but planned on doing a bit of it this spring. Last couple times we hunted rabbits we skinned them and cooked them over a campfire and they were excellent. My son still talks about it and I hope he can find time in his schedule to go with me this year..

We would fry Rabbit like southern fried Chicken or make a big pan of dressing like you would make for a Turkey, fill a big cake pan with dressing and Rabbit and Bake, getting hungry thinking about it, I would rather hunt Cotton Tails than Elk, more of them and a lot easier to pack out. just as good in a different way. YMMV Rio7

For squirrel, big tough ones get browned and pressure cooked.

The others are fried or browned and put in a covered corning wear dish with a quarter inch of water and in the oven at 325 until they smell delicious and the meat is very tender.

Young squirrel is hard to beat cooked on a grill, about the best tasting meat there is.

Sometimes I like to boil squirrel and duck and debone it, putting the meat in cornbread dressing wetted with the water the game was cooked in. Squirrel in one end of the pan and duck breast chumks in the other.

If the ducks are boiled with the skin on, I pour the fat off the top. The real flavor is in the water.

Can boil a half chicken and 2 fat duck breasts and make cornbread dressing with that also. Duck one end and chicken the other.

I always let my livestock or game "rest" 3 days in the fridge to let the rigger take its Coarse. Tender after that.

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MEATEATER. JACKRABBIT

Coooook! Coooook! Where's my hasenpfeffer!

A couple of days soak in cold saltwater does wonders for most small game.

I soak rabbit and squirrel overnight in salt water, I will try two days.



I think I will give the pressure cooker a try as suggested earlier and straight to the deep fryer.

Soaking rabbit 3 days in the fridge in buttermilk seems to work well for us. Squirrels , too.

Bring to room temperature, dredge in well seasoned flour and chicken fry them.

Ratdamnedgood.

We don't have cottontail or jackrabbits up here but we shoot a lot of snowshoe hares. They are delicious, my wife cooks them in a crockpot using the recipe a Puerto Rican friend gave us. Let me know if you want the recipe.

Of course, please share!

I didn't mention it earlier but the two I cooked recently were soaked overnight in salt water, then vacuum packed for almost a week covered with Salt Lick brand BBQ Rub.

I coated them in Bob's Red Mill Paleo baking flower and cooked them in a foil pan covered by foil for about three hours.

I was truly surprised after many failures in the past, mostly I believe, not cooking slow enough or properly tenderizing.

https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Lick-Or...;hvtargid=pla-4584207591584147&psc=1

When I was a kid we mostly floured the rabbits, browned them in a pot then covered with a can of mushroom soup, added a little water and simmered for an hour. Squirrels too.

You're right Jim, but we always skin and gut them immediately and when I picked this rabbit up there were fleas immediately crawling on my hands and arms.
Also, over the years, I have skinned and gutted hundreds of Cottontails and this one was the first one that that had fleas!! Maybe I just hung on to it too long.

Besides that, we also raised tame rabbits and they tasted much better. A New Zealand Red made more meat also.

Be danged!

I never skinned one without fleas!

We don't have them anymore....but I really like tame rabbit meat too.

I ate a tame rabbit once. Never again. Cottontails are waaaay better.

Yessir.

There’s no comparison in flavor and taste between wild and tame rabbits. Wild ones, even the bigger swamp rabbits are lots better.

Jmo