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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
Thanks for this! It looks like a lot of work, but someday it may be worth it if all you have between you and the wolf at the door is a rabbit raised at home! Or shot in the field….
Oh yeah! This is something I have been thinking about for a while, but never asked. Hank, thanks for sharing! Going to do some more rabbit hunting this year and this will be an excellent guide.
Hey, Hank – Thanks for the detailed step-by-step approach. I’ll review your pointers next time I get a snowshoe hare!
Paula took the words out of my mouth — thanks for this. I never paid enough attention to the silverskin, for that alone this is a huge help to me. And to know that the fat is bitter, which I suspected but didn’t know.
We are going jackrabbit hunting in … less than 24 hours, so this was especially timely.
Bp
Yummaay!!!
Good stuff.
Is Italy eating rabbits or hares?
My fried anything recipe is now with homemade yogurt instead of buttermilk. It sticks better for me. Tilapia has been particularly good this way.
I love the final picture – deconstructed reconstructed rabbit.
Looks indeed quite a bit more tricky than a chicken. I like rabbit though so maybe I should give it a try. Not sure if a lot of places sell whole rabbits here (Belgium), but there must be…
Just seeing your Global knife already makes me want to put mine to work again.
Wow. I think that is TOTALLY impressive. Anyone who can butcher well is a bit of an artisan, I reckon. Fantastic photos too!! Really awesome post!!! Thank you!
That was a great tutorial. I’ve been wasteful with my wild rabbits, as I make my first cut below the ribs and discard the front altogether. Never thought of rabbits as having belly meat / bacon.
The flesh on a domestic rabbit looks very different in colour and looks meatier than its wild counterpart. Chickeny. Thanks for the KFR recipe too.
I love rabbit–don’t hunt so have to buy domestic rabbit at an *outrageous* price–and want to pass along a suggestion about the belly meat. If you want to serve it as an additional “cut”, roll each flap up like a jelly roll, perhaps with a strip of fatty bacon or a piece of scallion in the center, and secure it with toothpicks or kitchen twine (or, in one case where I had neither, a long piece of green from a scallion, blanched and cut into thinner strips–ties like string if you’re careful and survives the cooking process, which for me is usually braising). I love the kidneys and liver as a cook’s treat!
Great tutorial, Hank… thanks!
fantastic stuff. The best walk through of breaking down a rabbit that I have ever seen.
I have only done this a few times in my life and frankly no where near as elegantly as you have here. I do certainly remember all that darn silverskin though!
Paula: Not a huge amount of work once you get the hang of it – I can break down a rabbit like this in maybe 10 minutes or less. But it does take some practice to get there…
Bpaul: How’d the jackrabbit hunting go? I need to get out there before the jacks get too rangey in the hot weather.
Josh: Italian eat both, but the stat I cited was coniglio, not lepre. And yes, yogurt works very well for this recipe! But not on tilapia. Tilapia is the Soylent Green of fish. Nasty stuff…
Laura: Did that just for you!
Kevin: I am sure you can find whole rabbits in Belgium. Beer braise, maybe?
Jen: Yes, domestics are lighter in color and fleshier than their wild cousins. I prefer cottontails, actually, even though they are smaller.
Carol: GREAT idea! I was thinking about doing something like that as I was butchering, but I’ve never actually done it. Now I’ll need to, once rabbit season starts.
Matt: Practice, practice…
Hey, I still like tilapia. Just think what all those plants eat that we eat!
I thought the kidneys were only there (in whole, domestic bunneh) to assuage doubts in the buyer that what they are buying is, indeed a bunneh. I heard a rumor once that mini poodles have eerily similar anatomy to a rabbit, and were often sold as such to unwary customers until a crackdown from the USDA required kidneys – positioned differently in canids than in leporids – be left in place.
Anyways, I never thought rabbit kidneys were much for eating.
This is great! Thanks Hank, you’ve saved me hours, now I can direct all my rabbit break down questions from customers to your site for the step by step. The fried rabbit looks great also. I do have to disagree with one thing though – although rabbits feed to meat ratio is lower than chickens the feed cost is extremely lower than chicken feed ( being mostly dried alfalfa). In my research I have found that one possible reason that they have gone out of favor is that they were associated with deppression era food – cheap, and easy to raise. When times got better people still associated them with “cheap food”.
‘A lot of people ignore this part, but if you think about it, it’s rabbit bacon! And who doesn’t like bacon?’
Nice line
SBW
Dan, interesting point. I’ve certainly found that attitude toward venison among some families who had to hunt deer to eat during the Depression – they couldn’t wait to get away from it. Fascinating how our attitudes toward the meat affect flavor…
Funny, had a conversation about rabbit at dinner last night- how it is so wonderfully tasty yet we rarely eat it. Can you recommend the best source to purchase rabbit in the Sac area?
Heather: Mmmm…. mini poodles….
Dan: Good point on the feed! Depression thing could definitely be part of it in the 1950s, but the difference in meat-weight and ease of parting out the two animals also comes into play. There’s a chapter in a book I read that talks about it. Will see if I can dig it out of my library.
Lynn: Corti has them, I bet Taylor’s Meats will have rabbit, Orangevale Meats always has them. And look in the freezer section of Raley’s — the one in Fair Oaks has rabbit a lot.
The photos are especially helpful to me…thank you so much for a very informative blog post! I raise meat rabbits in my backyard, but have not perfected butchering yet. Now I have a better idea of what I am doing.
Thanks again!
[...] up a rabbit in the usual manner and place it in a glass dish. Add enough black ale and ginger to cover, wrap loosely and [...]
Breaking down a rabbit isn’t that hard. It’s trickier than doing the same to a chicken, but that’s only because you’re probably more used to working with chickens.
And the meat? Oh, the meat! Wonderful, gamey, rich, tender.
I made a confit of rabbit, cooking the jointed meat in goose fat with garlic, bay and rosemary, slowly, for hours. It was delicious as it was, but then I rolled it in breadcrumbs and deep fried it, which made it truly out of this world.
It wasn’t until after I married my first husband that I learned the family lived by “if you catch/kill it, you dress it.” At 18 because I hunted and fished with my husband, I was forced to learn the art of dressing deer, rabbits, quail, doves, squirrels and all manner of freshwater fish. One thing I learned about wild rabbits is that the meat is far tastier if is deboned. Except for the forelegs, it really isn’t all that hard to do. If you haven’t tried treating it that way, by all means do. You’ll be amazed at the difference.
[...] online for instructions on how I to go about cutting this up. My savior came in the form of Hank Shaw’s, Hunter Angler Gardner Cook website and his how-to guide in cutting up a rabbit. Hank, I owe you a [...]
[...] stock, and the organ meat for another try at Black Mission Fig & Rabbit Pate. I used these instructions on how to butcher the rabbit, and the general recipe that follows is an adaptation of the [...]
Hank, I used your instructions to prepare my rabbit for ragu (after cutting it up I browned the pieces in oil etc.). Simple & clear, with great photos to illustrate & great attention to detail. Thanks!
Thank goodness for you. I decided to be adventurous but I’m squeamish, and needed direction!
I raise domestic rabbits and luckily haven’t seen near the silver skin as shown here. I got my feed:meat ratio to $2.46/lb on my latest batch of rabbits. Not too shabby. Rabbits are easy, fun, and sweet to take care of. It sure beats getting bit or kicked as can happen with other animals. Plus the do make great pets if you are so inclined. One thing about chickens is the eggs. That makes a big difference with someone choosing that animal over rabbit. With rabbits you get the pelt. After the fur industry died back, so went the rabbit production numbers. Rabbit meat has more protein, less cholesterol, less calories, and less water than any other meat.
Great article on the highly under rated and under used rabbit, we should eat more of this fantastic meat.
I noticed in your instruction that you did not discuss the dangers of tularemia. It is rare, but rabbits can contract the disease and pass it on to humans. The signs of tularemia are: a rabbit acting strangely (lack of fear, acting tame), and when dressing, check the liver and spleen for lesions and white spots, and these organs also may be enlarged. Also, make sure to cook rabbit meat thoroughly and wear gloves when dressing, as the disease is transmitted by bacteria.
[...] a quick rabbit anatomy lesson courtesy of the inimitable Hank Shaw, a quick browning in butter (we’re so going straight to [...]
[...] 3 pounds rabbit, cut into pieces (if rabbit isn’t already cut up, check out this great tutorial from Hank Shaw at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook) [...]
[...] you instructions, as those are all over the web. i used a little help from one my favorite blogs, hunter angler gardener cook. all butchered ready to [...]
I’m a hunter in Australia and the properties i look after have lots of rabbits, thanks for the instructions and the recipe
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Thanks so much for the great tutorial! This will make my butcher process much easier…I had it *almost* right…LOL!
Thank you very much for this very helpfull info.
My customers will benifit big time from the above!
Best Regards
Peter
Very informative and helpful. One question: Can squirrel be butchered the same way? Also, I am looking for squirrel recipes. Can we use rabbit recipes the same with squirrel?
Bradley: Yes, and yes. I have plenty of recipe for both critters on this site, too.
This was so helpful, grilling my first rabbit today and didn’t want to ruin it with bad butchering. Thanks!
excellent directions – Thanks much
[...] if you happen to wind up with a whole rabbit, Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has a great post with helpful pictures to get you started. Rabbit terrines and rillettes are also really common, not [...]
Wonderful post. I feel Skining and gutting the rabbit is far easier than plucking the chicken. But when cutting up, your right the chicken is easier. So I would say it pans out. The one thing I thought I would add, is if you are making Sausage with domestic rabbit. When deboning you can grind up the fat, skin, liver, heart, meat all togeather. And we don’t notice any different flavor and it makes it easier, less cutting. But if you are frying the rabbit this is the way to go!
is this something an absolute beginner can accomplish successfully?I have cleaned/ filleted fish for yr.s but have never attempted a mammal. As a child my Great Grandmother (Serbian) prepared domestic rabbit often and have always wanted learn to prepare them myself.
Thank you for posting this great info! You just saved tonight’s dinner. I bought a rabbit at the Farmer’s Market just to try something new, not realizing I’d have to cut it up myself. Great instructions!
Great site!
I just bought a .32 flintlock specificaly for hunting rabbits and squirrel. Reading this has got me thinking about raising meat rabbits. We already have chickens so rabbits would give a welcome change in diet.
[...] Reserve the belly so that you can use for another dish, you’ll see one shortly actually. Hank Shaw has an excellent reference on how to do this.Heat a heavy bottomed pot on medium-high heat and add in about 2 tbsp of olive oilSeason the rabbit [...]
[...] 1 rabbit, cleaned and cut into pieces How to Cut Up a Rabbit [...]