Cecil says:
Given our need for more sustainable sources of protein, though, consumers might someday have to make a choice: bugs or bunny?
Jeff says: groan
The main reason people do not eat more rabbit lies in the type of meat. As you said in the article, it is a lean meat, which means that for successful preparation and consumption by humans fat must be added in some way. Our systems require the use of fat to process the nutrients in the meat. There are records of people in lean times eating rabbit as basically the only meat available (and also squirrel) and showing symptoms of starvation. They were probably roasting it over a fire to cook it. I have fixed it many times by larding the carcass, depending on what I was doing with it. That is a process that involves poking bits of fat into it. Frying it like chicken does at least add some fat, of course, and is an excellent way to do it. Deer meat has more fat, like cattle, but still requires some additional fat added to keep from being dry. If you are desperate it’s better than nothing, but not for an extended period. The biggest difference in fat content between ruminants depends mainly on whether they have to move around a lot to feed or escape predators, thus using up their fat stores. This is probably another reason why mankind evolved as herders, also. Cattle that were driven to market in cowboy days had to be allowed to fatten back up in stockyards for the same reason.
I would say the leanness is much less important than the cultural factors. Rabbit is popular and common in many european countries. Eg Germany is apparently the top importer of Rabbit meat.
As another data point, when I was growing up in Australia we ate Rabbit usually about once a month. (English family).
See
Why Don’t We Eat More Rabbit in America?
It’s a fair amount of prep required for a relatively small amount of meat
I have most commonly come across rabbit in stew or pan fried. Doesn’t that make up for any deficiency in fat ?
I don’t eat more of it mostly because it is expensive and inconvenient. The local grocery stores do not carry it. Buying rabbit requires a trip into Pittsburgh to buy it from Wholeys (a meat and fish wholesaler in the strip district). It costs more than an equivalent weight of chicken or pork. In my youth, I used to hunt small game and would eat wild rabbits when I bagged them. Even at the time, I considered it to be too much humping a shotgun through brush and briars to be worth the pound or so of edible meat.
If I could purchase rabbit as easily as beef, chicken, or pork at the local grocery I’d certainly eat it. Back when I lived in Chicago and some local stores carried it I’d make rabbit stew occasionally.
Demand in my area is so low, though, that it’s almost impossible to find and expensive when you can locate it (lamb is similar - it costs three times what beef does in my area). I don’t hunt, which is probably how most rabbit eaters in the area get theirs, nor do I know any rabbit hunters to mooch off of.
I think there are class issues here - like squirrel, rabbit is seen as something the frontiersmen ate, and poor hicks in the backwoods, the sort whose family trees don’t branch much. It’s seen as low class. Beef, pork, and chicken are the “high class” or status foods for many even now, whether they are or not (my upper middle class relatives are actually probably more likely to eat rabbit than my redneck in-laws, who are trying mighty hard to distance themselves from the prior generations’ eating habits).
I don’t think prepping is an issue - today’s butchery industry is perfectly capable of supplying ready-to-cook rabbit as it is offering anything else ready for the consumer to take home and cook without lengthy prep.
I don’t eat rabbit because it’s difficult to find and expensive when it’s available.
I would definitely cook up some rabbit stew every now and again if it were more accessible.
I ate rabbit once, at a Chinese restaurant where we had Chinese nationals order off the non-English menu. I don’t know if this is typical, but the method of preparation seemed to be, “Take a skinned/gutted rabbit, hack the crap out of it with a cleaver, bones and all, then cook and serve.” I had to pick shards of bone out of my mouth the whole time. I kept looking around to see if I was doing it wrong, it seemed like such an absurd way to eat meat. But then, what are your options with something that small?
I don’t eat rabbit for the same reason I don’t eat cat or dog - because to me these are pets, not meat. Not particularly rational - cows and pigs are pretty cute, too, and I still eat them. Even when rabbit is available at the grocery store, which it is pretty regularly, I still can’t bring myself to consider buying it and cooking it.
COOK! Where’s my hassenpfeffer?!
I saw a rabbit kiosk at a county fair one time, and the clerk was asking each customer, “Pets or meat?”
Chinese restaurants here do the same thing with chicken. There are always bone shards in the food.
A rabbit can be cut apart at the joints just like a chicken can.
You never want to make soup with rabbit.
I had frog legs at a rather pricey Chinese restaurant where they took a cleaver to them in this fashion. There were so many bone shards in the dish that I couldn’t eat it.
Rabbit hunting is one my favorite types of hunting, so my family eats it often.
Unfortunately, none of them will eat it if it is recognizable as rabbit, so I grind it up with pork and spices and make breakfast sausage.
You mean you don’t want to boil the bunny.
I make rabbit soup every once in a while. You don’t want to boil that either.
No, people just don’t like to find a hare in their soup.
You would have to boil a hare to find it in the soup. Hare and rabbit are not interchangeable terms.
Yeah, that just kills the joke doesn’t it :rolleyes: