Fermented Rabbit

[donrad]

This morning I shot a rabbit in my garden. I skinned it, buried the offal in the garden, ate the liver & kidneys still warm, and put the fetuses & head in my perpetual broth pot. The bones will go in later.

I raised rabbits for about 10 years for meat, but always cooked it. I tried eating raw wild rabbit muscle before but found it tough and bland. I was going to try dry aging this one but then decided on fermenting.

For years I have been researching Hesenpfeffer recipes. This is a German dish where rabbit is marinated in vinegar. I figured this was originally a naturally pickled rabbit recipe, possibly involving sauerkraut juice, but could find no information on the web. I did find this experiment for primitive buried pickled rabbit at this very interesting blog:

http://goingferal.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/fermented-rabbit/

however this person made broth from the rabbit and I want to eat it raw.

So I cut the rabbit up and smothered it with kimchi that I made last year. Kimchi is an oriental spicy fermented mixed vegetable food popular in Korea (its the national dish). It is made like sauerkraut.

I plan to leave it at room temperature for a few days to see what happens. I also added some orange juice and a little live vinegar. I am wondering if this will last for weeks or months like pickled vegetables.

Excluding high meat which I hate, does anyone have any experience or references for this type of food? This is more of a controlled fermentation using beneficial bacteria rather than just letting it rot. I imagine cevechi would be a similar seafood based ferment with a similar history and modern distortion.


 

[CitrusHigh]

What do you mean by beneficial bacteria, which ones are not?

Also thanks for performing this experiment, I look forward to the results!

We don't seem to have rabbits on our land much anymore, I think my doggy scared them all away/ate them. 

[eveheart]

Thanks for sharing that link.

The terms beneficial bacteria and rot might require some clarification. Bacteria cause decomposition. Bacteria are part of a vast array of decomposers. Other decomposers are enzymes, molds, fungi, and so on. When we eat, we decompose our food.

You can introduce decomposers, e.g. adding a yeast starter to dough, but most decomposers are readily available in the environment.

The way I understand it, Bill Mollison is describing a way of letting the rabbit decompose without first getting eaten by maggots and bears. I'd paraphrase the article as a way of making week-old high meat.

[donrad]

Beneficial bacteria and yeasts live in our digestive system and help us digest our food. They survive, we survive, everyone is happy. We co-evolved with them for millions of years. They even produce vitamins we need to survive. Herbivores must have them to survive and have evolved special digestive systems to help the process. 

Bad bacteria are either toxic themselves or produce toxins that make us sick. Evolution has given us the ability smell some of them so we can avoid them, while others are detected by our digestive system and we get diarrhea or puke them up. In sufficient quantities they can kill us, and they do. Some people have built up a resistance to some of them and somehow enjoy eating rotten (high) foods. To each his own.

Over long periods of time cultures have learned to cultivate and propagate the best symbiotic bacteria and yeasts. Yoghurt cultures, yeasts for bread and wine, sauerkraut acidophilus bacteria, and beers yeasts are examples. If you innoculate foods with lots of good microbes, the bad ones get crowded out. The good yeasts and bacteria can work inside or outside our bodies.   

[donrad]

I got a second rabbit and just dry aged it with salt and pepper, no pickling.

The pickled rabbit was more flavorful. Both of them became very tender after about of day of air drying. They lasted about two weeks in the frig with no off flavors or odors. I kept them in a brown paper bag. Still eating the second one now.