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Photo by Holly A. Heyser
I am pretty sure I don’t go a month without someone emailing or asking me about how to break down one critter or another, and while we were butchering that lamb recently several people asked how to cut up a rabbit.
Butchering a rabbit is indeed harder than cutting up a chicken. In fact, that reason — along with a slightly higher feed-to-meat ratio, is why America became a nation of chicken-eaters and not rabbit-eaters. The question was actually in doubt a century ago.
Now meat rabbit production in the US is less than half what it was even in 1985, and we eat only about 17,000 tons a year, according to one 2005 survey — compare that with Italy’s 300,000 tons. Buon Appetito!
The buttermilk fried rabbit you see above is now largely a Southern novelty or a hunter’s special. Pity, because it is every bit as delicious as a perfect fried chicken.
Most of the rabbits and hares Holly and I eat are wild cottontails or jackrabbits, although an occasional snowshoe hare or domestic rabbit finds its way to our table. And it’s a domestic I decided to work with for this tutorial.
Why butcher your own rabbits? They’re cheaper, sometimes a full $1.50 a pound less than a pre-portioned bunny. Also, if you are raising your own or are a hunter, this is good information to know.
First you need a very sharp knife: I use a Global flexible boning knife, but a paring knife or a fillet knife would also work, as would a chef’s knife. I also use a Wusthof cleaver and a pair of kitchen shears. Have a clean towel handy to wipe your hands, and a bowl for trimmings.
Start by picking over the carcass for silverskin and sinew, and slice it off. You’ll be doing a lot of this, but you might as well get started with the easy stuff.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
I always start by removing the front legs, which are not attached to the body by bone. Slide your knife up from underneath, along the ribs, and slice through.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Usually there is some schmutz (a technical term) attached to the front leg that does not look like good eats: fat, sinew, and general non-meaty stuff. All can go into pate if you are so inclined. Or you can toss it.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Next comes the belly. A lot of people ignore this part, but if you think about it, it’s rabbit bacon! And who doesn’t like bacon? In practice, this belly flap becomes a lovely boneless bit in whatever dish you are making.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
I start by turning Mr. Bunny over and slicing right along the line where the saddle (or loin) starts, then running the knife along that edge to the ribs. When you get to the ribcage, you fillet the meat off the ribs, as far as you can go, which is usually where the front leg used to be. Finish by trimming more schmutz off the edge.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Up next, the hind legs, which are the money cut in a rabbit. Hunters take note: Aim far forward on a rabbit, because even if you shoot up the loin, you really want the hind legs clean — they can be a full 40 percent of a gutted carcass’ weight.
Start on the underside and slice gently along the pelvis bones until you get to the ball-and-socket joint. When you do, grasp either end firmly and bend it back to pop the joint. Then slice around the back leg with your knife to free it from the carcass.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Once you’ve done both legs, you are left with the loin, which is the most persnickety. It’s really the rabbit loin vs. chicken breast thing that did it in for the bunny as a major meat animal — there’s a larger swath of boneless meat in a chicken than in a rabbit. Both have a tendency to dry out, but then there’s that delicious chicken skin…
Now is a good time to remove a little more silverskin. The back of the loin has several layers, and most need to be removed. The final layer is very tough to cut off, and I often leave it. On a large hare or jackrabbit, however, this layer needs to go, too.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
You’re now ready to portion the saddle. Ever heard the expression “long in the saddle?” It is an animal husbandry term: A longer stretch of saddle or loin means more high-dollar cuts come slaughter time. And meat rabbits have been bred to have a very long saddle compared to wild cottontails.
Start by removing the pelvis, which is really best in the stockpot. I do this by taking my cleaver severing the spine by banging the cleaver down with the meat of my palm. I then bend the whole shebang backwards and finish the cut with the boning knife.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Now you grab your kitchen shears and snip off the ribs, right at the line where the meat of the loin starts. The ribs go into the stockpot, too.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Guess what? There’s more silverskin to slice off. Could you do it all in one fell swoop? You bet, but it is delicate work and I like to break it up to keep my mental edge: The reason for all this delicate work is because the loin is softer than the silverskin, and if you cook it with the skin on, it will contract and push the loin meat out either side. Ugly. And besides, if you are making Kentucky Fried Rabbit, who wants to eat sinew?
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Your last step is to chop the loin into serving pieces. I do this by using my boning knife to slice a guide line through to the spine. Then I give the spine a whack with the cleaver by laying the cleaver blade on the spine and whacking it with the meat of my palm.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
And voila! A bunny cut into lots of delicious serving pieces.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
What about the offal, you say? I’ll do more on that later, but suffice to say rabbit livers and hearts are pretty much like those of a chicken. The kidneys are delicious, too. Remove the fat (rabbit fat tends to be foul-tasting) and peel the nearly-invisible membrane off the kidney before cooking. (Here is a rabbit kidney recipe I call Marsh, Mountain and Field.)
What to do with your newly portioned rabbit? Well, you could browse through my rabbit recipes. But since Holly and I so rarely get to eat domestic rabbit, which we know will be tender, I decided to fry it like a chicken.
I used my friend Elise’s buttermilk fried chicken as a model, although I kicked up the paprika and spices a bit. Here is my fried rabbit recipe. With an ice cold beer, it was every bit as good as it looks!
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
Just used your tutorial to cut up a rabbit from the market and the instructions and photos were spot on. Thanks so much!
[...] the pie filling. Trim and cut up the rabbits into “collops” as described here. Including the belly meat, you will have 10 pieces. Flatten with a meat tenderizer, then season [...]
[...] realized all that about halfway through cutting a whole rabbit into serving pieces on Saturday. Even though I’d never done it before, I found myself [...]
!Gracias! Thanks to you, I pieced the rabbit I bought.
[...] borrowed the picture from Hank Shaw’s post on “How to Cut Up a Rabbit” – a very informative article on the process. Thanks to Hank for putting the effort in. Photo [...]
Okay – got the squirrel plus your recipe for Spanish Style Squirrel Stew. Now, to attempt cutting the little critters up. They’re red squirrels – really small. Hoping I don’t hack a finger off in the process. Love your website!
Wanted to thank you for a great step by step rabbit breakdown. I have never done one and I cannot wait to grill it. The grain of the meat is beautiful but that silverskin has got to go…tedium. I’m sure the results will be worth it and I intend to visit your site again and again as I become more “meat independant”.
When I googled rabbit recipes this morning, I didn’t expect to find your post on how to cut it up, too. I’ve printed it out and it will be a great help. Though I’ve had rabbit in restaurants, this is my first time to prepare and I acquired it by accident. We’ve had several rabbits getting into our rabbit proof, or so we thought, fenced container yard here at the nursery. I have several dedidcated hunters on staff so the rabbits didn’t stand a chance. But…I am excited to prepare my first rabbit dish tonight. I’m leaning towards a mustard dish to cut the gaminess. Fingers crossed. Thank you for the post.
- Cheryl
[...] this goes for store bought rabbit too, as I’ve only seen them available whole. This link on how to cut up a rabbit is extremely [...]
What brand and size cleaver did you use?
Josh: It is a Wusthof. Not sure how big, but it is not huge…
[...] out to be far easier than I anticipated – there’s an excellent step-by-step tutorial here. One thing to be aware of is that Hank is cutting up a wild rabbit that he has skinned and [...]
Thanks for all the info about the silver skin…Now all I need is a rabbit to practice on…
Wonderfrul detail. I’ve given up on removing all silver skin, but am really stuck on the internal organs. I need help on how to remove these without damage, whether I can eat them (after all chicken livers and lamb’s hearts are OK)I understand there’s a bit I must remove because it’s bitter, but dont know really what that is?
Thank you for giblet help!!
Pam
Pam: I just grab the internal organs and pull them out. I’ve never really damaged any doing this. You can eat the giblets in any domesticated rabbit, but I tend to avoid wild rabbit livers – if the animal had tularemia, the parasites tend to lodge in the liver. Better safe than sorry.
Rabbit fat has a tendency to be bitter, so I remove it from the kidneys and heart.
Excellent with russet potatoes. OH MY!!!
sorry. posted to wrong page. parting out the rabbit was was easy with your instructions. German stewed Rabbit was to die for. Will DEFINITELY make this again.
Pam, it’s the gall bladder you want to avoid. It is indeed bitter and will contaminate anything that the contents come into contact with.
Finding it and removing it is easy – the gall bladder is attached to the liver. It’s a small green sack (white, actually, with potent green contacts) with a duct/tube on one end. To avoid spilling the contents, I move away (1/4″?) from the gall bladder, slice the duct through gently (don’t worry about slicing the liver), then use a fingernail to lift, pinch and pull the gall bladder away.
I’ll go a step further than Hank on tularemia. I’m very careful to treat my wild rabbit the way I do commercial chicken (the causative agent is a bacterium, and can be found throughout the flesh), but it is just not found in domesticated rabbit (they’re a different genus/species than our wild cottontails).
Great information. I miss fried rabbit as they are a bit like the quail where I am from, all but extinct. I will be looking for a rabbit after reading this. Thanks for the great writing and photos. Impressive.
[...] noted below, I found this link for How to Cut Up a Rabbit useful, and I learned a new term, silver skin. I had dealt with this thin connective tissue on beef [...]
[...] the rabbits. You can cut up your rabbits, or you can just chop them in half with a cleaver — you’re going to pull off the meat anyway. [...]
[...] The trouble with rabbit is the lack of accessibility and therefore they are usually fairly costly. if you are lucky enough to find them at your local butcher shop or farmer’s market, try to pick up a whole rabbit rather than one that is pre portioned. Butchering the rabbit, especially for this recipe is easy but if you need further guidance, check out the video linked here.. rabbit butchery. [...]
[...] I got a whole rabbit for this process, and proceeded to cut it according to the directions in one of my favorite books, On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals. For anyone who is not familiar with this process and who don’t have a copy of On Cooking, the process is well-described on a variety of websites, including this one (http://honest-food.net/2010/05/19/how-to-cut-up-a-rabbit/). [...]
[...] 3 squirrels, cut into serving pieces [...]
[...] How to cut up a rabbit http://honest-food.net/2010/05/19/how-to-cut-up-a-rabbit/ [...]
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Is there a video of this? I haven’t had rabbit in over 25 years.
I do not hunt but would love to know when it is safe to eat wild rabbit/hare here on LI? What about squirrels? (best time to hunt for ediblness. What about rabies?
A reasonably powerful air rifle will suffice. You mention all the ethnics that ate rabbit in the description except Italian. While my immediate family did not eat them, I assure you many many many others did. Chicken Cacciatore is nice with wabbit is very nice. A older Italian gent I met said during the depression his dad would come home from a day’s foraging in NYC (YEP I SAID FORAGING) with a bag of starlings like 2-4 per person, pigeons 1-2 a person. Dark meat on a turkey he reports. We all had meat that night(s). If work was available they ate better, I have no issues except for disease and ticks/disease. Squirrel I am told, is kinda like chicken, true or not?
I am looking for domestic rabbit that is affordable, the only ones I get around me are Chinese, and I do not trust them.
Chris: You need a hunting license first, then check your local game laws for seasons, etc.
As for Italian rabbit, I have several recipes for Italian-style rabbit on this site. I’ve eaten pigeons and like them very much. Squirrel is a little like chicken thigh. Dark(ish) and dense.
[...] Cut the rabbit into portion pieces. If you are unclear on that, there is an excellent article about cutting the rabbit here [...]