Smoked rabbit - a recipe for how to cook smoked rabbit at home.

Cooking begins with preparing the carcasses:

Before preparing delicious rabbit meat, you need to prepare the carcasses for smoking. First, you need to cut up the rabbit carcasses in this way:

• separate the ribs from the carcass;
• cut the carcass into four pieces (two shoulder blades and two from the back);

Then, to make the smoked rabbit meat more tender and soft, the cut up carcasses must be kept suspended in a draft for 48–96 hours. The optimal temperature when keeping meat in the wind should not exceed 10°C. If the temperature is lower, the meat needs to be ventilated longer.

Next, the ventilated rabbit meat needs to be filled with brine.

Marinade for smoking meat calculation for one rabbit carcass:

• warm boiled water – 1/2 liter;
• salt - ½ tsp;
• chopped garlic – 2 cloves;
• laurel leaf – 2 -3 pcs.;
• ginger (powder) - ½ tsp;
• vinegar (30%) – 3 tbsp. l.;
• black pepper (peas) – 2-3 peas;
• sugar – 1 tsp;
• juniper berries (dried) – 5 pcs.

How to prepare a marinade for smoking rabbit meat.

Preparing such a solution is very simple. Pour all the listed ingredients into warm boiled water, mix vigorously and the marinade is ready.There is no need to boil it.

The rabbit meat must be poured with this brine so that the pieces of the carcass are completely covered with the marinade.

Next, the meat must be kept in the solution for 48 hours. During this time, you need to turn the carcasses several times (2-3) to ensure even salting.

After the meat is removed from the brine, you need to make several (about 5) cuts in the carcasses into which we place pieces of garlic and lard. Thus, before smoking, our meat acquires a pleasant aroma from garlic, and lard gives the rabbit meat additional softness.

To ensure that the finished smoked meat does not have a red tint near the bones, the joints and large bones in the meat must be beaten off before smoking.

If suddenly, before smoking, you notice that mold has formed on pieces of meat, you just need to wipe it off with a dry, clean cloth.

Having completed all these simple manipulations, the rabbit meat needs to be placed in the smoking chamber.

Alder wood is best suited for smoking rabbit meat.

The stove needs to be lit so that the meat warms up. After warming up, you need to turn the heat down to low.

In order to smoke rabbit meat, a large amount of smoke is not required, for this reason, a fairly wide hole is often left for the smoke to escape.

To prevent the meat from drying out, when smoking, you need to dip dried pieces of meat into the brine from time to time.

The smoking time depends on the strength of the fire in the oven, approximately 2-3 hours.

In order for our homemade preparation to be better preserved, some time before the end of smoking, we need to add juniper branches to the alder firewood, the smoke of which has antimicrobial properties.

To determine whether smoked rabbit meat is ready, you need to pierce pieces of meat in several places with a steel pin.If the pin enters the meat without effort, smoking can be stopped.

It is best to store smoked rabbit meat prepared according to this homemade recipe hanging in a dry, cool place with good ventilation.

If you plan to store such preparation for longer than 30 days, you need to smoke the meat again for 15-20 minutes, be sure to add juniper branches for smoking.

Please note that after this repeated smoking, the meat becomes more rigid.

I usually add pieces of delicious smoked rabbit meat to pea soup. And also, with delicious delicacy meat, you get an excellent roast baked in pots. Bon appetit.

See also video: Smoked rabbit, recipe in a hot smoked smokehouse.