The Best Way to Store Rabbit Meat for Easy Meals
Want to learn the BEST way to store rabbit meat for easy meals?! This simple hack will make it so easy to grab a package of rabbit meat from the freezer and have dinner ready in minutes!
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Debone the Rabbit Meat
Deboning the rabbit meat can be a bit of work on the front end (and not fun after a long butcher day), but having packages of clean, deboned meat is much easier to thaw and cook quickly for an easy dinner. Save a few whole rabbits for roasting, but debone the rest of your meat.
New to deboning? Check out How to Debone a Rabbit (Step By Step Picture Guide)!
Separate the Meat Cuts
After the rabbit meat has been deboned, divide the backstraps and back leg meat into meal size portions for your family. You can include the front legs as well, but they are hard to debone. If your family does not like meat on the bone, save the legs for broth or soup.
Place each meal size portion into a vacuum seal bag. If you had a good harvest, you should have several meal size packages. In another vacuum seal bag, place all of the remaining carcasses, bones, or meat on the bone to be used to make bone broth later.
Make The Marinades
Once the backstraps and back legs have been divided into meal-sized portions in vacuum sealed bags, make 2 or 3 of your favorite marinades. I like to make a double batch of my soy-free Asian marinade and my Southwest marinade.
Pour the marinades evenly into each meal-sized bag of meat. Mix the marinade with the rabbit meat until everything is evenly coated. Vacuum seal the bag and label it with the name of the marinade and the date it was packaged.
These marinated, meal-size portions of deboned rabbit meat are work in the beginning, but it makes dinner in the future so quick and easy. Thaw the rabbit meat for a couple of hours and throw it on the grill! Add some rice and a veggie, and dinner is ready. This is the best way to store rabbit meat!
Grind the Rabbit Meat
When deboning a rabbit, save the belly flaps and other meat scraps to grind up. The belly flaps are tough and rubbery when cooked in once piece, but it makes for excellent ground rabbit meat. You can also include the liver (with the gallbladder removed) and kidneys to the ground meat for added nutritional value.
Spread out the rabbit meat that you plan to grind on a cookie sheet and place it in the freezer. The goal is to have the meat softly frozen. If it is frozen solid, it will not go through the grinder. If it is completely thawed, it will gum up the grinder. You want the meat to be softly frozen (kind of slushy).
Once the meat has firmed up in the freezer, you can begin to feed it through the meat grinder into a bowl. The Kitchen Aid Meat Grinder attachment is simple to use and a go-to at our house. Be sure to send one or two pieces through at a time and use the meat press to push it through.
Once the rabbit meat is ground, you will notice that it has a lot of water. Put the ground rabbit meat into a colander and allow it to drain in the sink for a minute or two. After the meat is drained, place it in a vacuum sealed package to throw into recipes later.
Favorite Recipes: Italian Sausage with Rabbit and Parmesan Meatballs
Why You’ll Love This Method
While it is a little extra work to debone all of the rabbit meat, package it in marinades, and grind up the extra meat, you will be so thankful and more likely to use your rabbit meat. Instead of carving out extra dinner prep time to thaw out a whole rabbit and debone it before you can cook it, help your future self by doing the work ahead of time.
Plus, nothing can beat the taste rabbit meat that has been frozen and thawed in a delicious marinade!
The best way to store rabbit meat for easy dinners is to debone, marinate, vacuum seal, and freeze! You will enjoy delicious, flavorful rabbit meat that took next to no time to prepare!
