Posted on 08/05/2012 3:38:58 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Recipes for the Post-Apocalypse: How and Why to Eat Rat Meat
Rat is a readily available street food in some Southeast Asian countries, and earlier editions of The Joy of Cooking contained instructions on the proper butchering of squirrels. But rodents have fallen out of favor in most Western cuisines, relegated to mere vermin. So how would you go about cooking a rat if you'd never tried it before?
Laura Ginn did just that recently, breaking her lengthy vegetarianism to how to butcher and prepare rodent meat. Ginn is an artist whose work largely incorporates survival skills such as skinning and tanning. (Those who are squeamish about the skinning and dismantling animals might want to steer clear of Ginn's photography, but it offers sober images of those skills at work.) She opened her recent exhibition, "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch," at New York's Allegra LaViola Gallery with a sit-down dinner where the star food was rat. Ginn attended the occasion, appropriately, in a dress made from 300 rat pelts.
This meant that Ginn had to learn how to skin, butcher, and prepare rats, with the help of chef Yuri Hart. Ginn shared with us what she learned from the experience, the pros and cons of consuming rat meat, and a recipe for rat jerky.
(Q & A with Laura Ginn at the IO9 link provided ...)
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
Yuri Hart was kind enough to share his recipe for preparing rat jerky:
Rat Jerky
Created by Yuri Hart and Robert Pugh
15 Rats
1.Take all rats and with a smoking gun, smoker or cold smoker, smoke the rats with hickory until they have a smokey flavor.
2. Season the rats with salt and pepper. Line the rats on a grate with a sheet tray underneath.
3. Set the oven to 280 degrees, place the rats in the oven and cook for three hours, or until rats are crispy on the outside.
4. Let the rats cool, and then pull the meat off of the bodies into bite size pieces.
5. Serve meat at room temperature.
Double bonus ...
Recipe: Rat Braise Developed by Yuri Hart
15 whole rats, skinned and gutted, tails removed
Salt and pepper 6 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
4 medium white Spanish onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
5 sprigs fresh thyme
3 bay leaves
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 bottle red wine
1 cinnamon stick
Zest of one orange
1 head of garlic cut in half down the center vertically, not peeled 1 pint blueberries
2 quarts chicken stock
2 cups veal glacé
Red wine vinegar to taste.
1. Lightly season rats on one side with salt and pepper and sear on both sides in 3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil until lightly browned using an oven-safe rondeau or braising pan large enough to comfortably fit without crowding. Transfer rats to a 5-by-8-inch molded edge sheet pan
2. Add onions, celery and carrot to the rondeau or braising pan and sweat, about 5 minutes. Add thyme, bay leaves and rosemary and sweat until aromatic.
3. Deglaze the pan with wine, add cinnamon, orange zest, garlic and blueberries. Reduce by ¾.
4. Add rats back into the pot along with any drippings. Add chicken stock and veal glacé and bring to a boil. Return to a simmer, cover with a lid or foil and place in a 330-degree oven and cook for about 90 minutes or until meat is tender.
5. Let meat cool in liquid until it is easy to handle, and then transfer to sheet pan.
6. Strain liquid and reduce until ¾ to 1 cup remains.
7. Pick the rat meat and discard all bones. Once liquid is reduced, mix ¼ cup to a ½ cup into meat until just moistened (you do not want a lot of liquid), and season with salt, pepper and red wine vinegar.
8. Line the sheet pan with plastic wrap, with the wrap extending over the edges. Pack meat onto the sheet pan and fold the plastic over so it completely covers meat. Refrigerate overnight to set.
9. Unmold the meat while still cold and cut into 20 portions. Heat a sauté pan with 3 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. Sear one side of the meat until golden brown, transfer to an oven at 350 degrees until hot all the way through. For sauce, reduce remaining liquid from meat by ½ until it is the consistency of syrup. Serve with a full-bodied cabernet sauvignon.
Yield: 20 servings.
Um, yeah, not sure I’d be happy about eating an animal that feasts on its own s**t unless I was literally starving to death...
ummm yeah... like all this craps going to be available.... NOT
I have never seen a mouse in this house and certainly never a rat so I don’t feel too bad about passing on this recipe.
Speaking as one that has made his rent in culinary pursuits.... I'd cook it like I do squirrel. Stove-top braise, browned, then covered, with mirepoix and a suitable liquid (coffee, red wine, beer). Make a sauce from the drippings. Serve with biscuits.
I think my old Escoffier recipes may include roasted mice on toast points. Mice would be more like sparrows. Eat bones and all.
/johnny
I been eatin squirells for close to 30 years now..
shoot the damn rodent..
skin and gut it..
throw the whole damn carcus into a smoker for 10 hours or so..
eat it like a chiken wing..
cook some potatoes to make it a meal..
Ping.
Hey. I’m going full on squirrel.
Yuk, they are going to eat Democrats??? Did you ever try to clean one?
I recommend “Millers in Onion Sauce” (Millers being the nickname for the rats which infested the breadrooms of ships back in the day) from the exellent companion cookbook to the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O’Brian, “Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It’s a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels (Patrick O’Brian)”
Hmm. Those mega-rodent nutria might be worth looking into as a protein source...
A lot of people call squirrel, tree rats and my family when they go hunting, eat squirrel and say its delicious...Hubby brought some back one year, (yuk) and fried them up with lots of butter. I left the house and the squirrel to him and my son’s.....fried whole and take apart as you eat them...maybe rats would taste similar...don’t want to ever eat either one....
Squirrel stew is excellent. Check a few recipes on line. Simmer for hours with veggies. Squirrels are hard to skin however so check out the proper technique.
I might add that young groundhogs (some call them woodchucks) are also excellent meat.
At first glance I thought you wrote, make a sauce from the droppings.
No, no, no, no, no....
I guess that depends on where you are. I can field strip a local tree rat in about 2 minutes, ready for the frying pan.
/johnny
/johnny
The hell with rats...
I’m eating bugs!
Any recipes for ‘Rat Wellington’, ‘Rat Pot Pie’ or ‘Rat Salad’?
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