24 hour resting period...

[VickieB]

I am heading to my daughter's in MS; she is having her first baby! But, I had 15 rabbits that were 12 weeks old tomorrow, and my son is taking care of the rabbits. I decided to dispatch all the 12 week olds and get them into the freezer so he would have 15 less rabbits to take care of. After cleaning them I decided to cut them up into pieces and freeze them that way. I put them the first 7 into the freezer while working on the last 8. Afterwards I remembered that they have to have a 12 to 24 hour resting period. I quickly pulled the ones out of the freezer, which were well on their way to being frozen. If you are freezing your rabbits do you still give them the 24-48 hour resting period before freezing? Will they be tough if they are frozen first?

 

[animalmom]

I've frozen rabbit that wasn't going to get used within a couple days and have not noticed any toughness. I figure it takes a few hours in the freezer before it is total frozen, or in other words, resting is resting.

I'd be interested in others experience with freezing with rest and freezing without rest.

What say you folk? Inquiring minds would like to know. Please and thanks.

Oh, VickieB, congrats on the soon to be here grandbaby. Let us know if it is a buck or a doe, oops I mean boy or girl, and pictures are required.

 

[Moonshine]

I've frozen rabbit that wasn't going to get used within a couple days and have not noticed any toughness. I figure it takes a few hours in the freezer before it is total frozen, or in other words, resting is resting.

I'd be interested in others experience with freezing with rest and freezing without rest.

What say you folk? Inquiring minds would like to know. Please and thanks.

Oh, VickieB, congrats on the soon to be here grandbaby. Let us know if it is a buck or a doe, oops I mean boy or girl, and pictures are required.

3x on the freezer rabbits and 2x on the grand baby! Congratulations!

 

[VickieB]

My soon to be grandbaby is a little buck. This is his mom's first bun. Her twin sister has 3 little bucks. Bucks seem to run in this family.

I went ahead and pulled all the rabbit out of the freezer and stuffed it into my fridge. I see I could have left them in the freezer! This has been a long day. I dispatched all my 12 week old buns (15 of them), and cut 8 of them into pieces. I thought I would freeze and package all the rear legs together, all the tenderloins together and all the wings (front legs) together. The smaller loin pieces I put in a package to use in a couple of days with a Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe. I hope this turns out well...

 

[nawma]

Congrats Vickie on the new grandson! Grandbabies are the best!, I have a lot better luck with getting tender meat on rabbits of all ages if they rest at least 24 hours. Doubt a few hours in freezer would change that.

 

[VickieB]

So the meat is able to "rest" in the freezer as well as the fridge? I was thinking that I would have to rest it after thawing out, which I would hate to do every time I pulled rabbit out of the freezer to cook. I'm one of those "last minute" cooks, if you know what I mean...

 

[sawfish99]

We have always taken the rabbits straight from slaughter to packaging to freezer. The last batch of 10, we decided to age in the fridge. We will not do that again for the following reasons:
Some of the meat starts to dry out
it is a pain in the butt to make that much room in the fridge (even in our secondary fridge)
we package using chicken shrink bags and the aged rabbits didn't "roll up" as nicely for packaging
There was NO difference in the meat quality. If anything, the aged rabbits were dryer as noted in the first comment

 

[VickieB]

Sawfish, do you rest the meat after thawing then? Or do you consider the time in the freezer as the "rest" period.

 

[Bossroo]

All animals go through "rigor mortis" so they have to "rest" at room temperature untill the rigor ( stiffness) pases as the muscles start to relax. It is complete when all muscles have relaxed wich could take 2-4 days. Keeping an animal frozen does nothing for the muscles to relax the rigor.

 

[VickieB]

That's what I suspected, Boss. But there are a lot of people that say their meat turned out wonderful after freezing...I wasn't certain if they rested the meat after thawing or not, though.