Two August Girls

A Blog about reading and everything else.....

Monday, February 11, 2008

Fresh Muskrat....WHAT!!!

Picture this:  Well dressed, fashionable, well organized, trendy, cute Mom driving along in her cool little car (read overworked, snot on sleeve from 6 month old with cold, in a rush because she is going to be late for the daughter and in a white mini van, who tripped down the stairs with the baby because she was in said rush I can Dream Damn't), minding her own business. When driving home I pass a sign that says Fresh Muskrat.  WTF I say to myself. So I turn my car around to see if I read it wrong.  NOPE,  sure enough larger than life the sign reads: Fresh Muskrat!
EWWWW! Anything with the word rat in it spells gross to me.  I mean I will not even own a pet rat, domesticated of course.  I view squirels as rats with furry tales, so you see where I am coming from.
I decide to explore this, as we are fairly new to the area, and maybe people use them to hunt or fish (again not my choice but I live on the eastern shore).  Wrong again, they( I am pausing here to say if you are eating or weak of stomach tread carefully on the next few lines) EAT THEM!!!!!!!  It is an Eastern Shore delicacy, so I guess I should be expecting Andrew Zimmerman soon.
Wow! So here it goes for any of you interested the recipe and please do not feel free to tell me how it is I am NOT going to try it.
I mean come on this is how the recipe starts, when cooking with rats.  How can that be healthy don't they carry the plague? Anyway here goes and don't say I never exposed you to any culture.
Two things to watch out for when cooking with rats:

1. The musk! (It’s in the rear. Scrape it out.)
2. The bones! (They are small, and there are many.)

BBQ Muskrat

Ingredients
1 medium to large muskrat

Baking mixture:

1 c. duck sauce
2 beef bullion cubes
2 c. water
dash of salt and pepper

BBQ sauce:

1 T. flour
2 tsp. vinegar
1 medium onion
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. dark brown sugar
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 c. catsup

Preparation:
Place muskrat in shallow baking dish with baking mixture. Cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. While muskrat is cooking, mix the other ingredients in a saucepan to make the BBQ sauce. Make sure to stir frequently, as it tends to stick. Cook for only 3-4 minutes. Drain essence of cooked muskrat. Pour on BBQ sauce, working all over. Put back in oven (uncovered) for about 15 minutes.

Line illustrations of four different shaped cooking pots


Mom's Old Fashioned Muskrat

Ingredients
2 muskrats
3 slices fat meat
salt (to taste)
2 tsp. pepper
sage (to taste)
1 medium onion (sliced)
cooking oil

Preparation:
Clean muskrats. Put in a pot. Cover with water. Let boil for 5 minutes. Pour water off. Add fresh water, fat meat, salt, pepper, sage and onion. Let boil until tender. In an iron skillet, put a small amount of cooking oil. Put muskrat in skillet and let brown a little.

(courtsey ofhttp://www.pbs.org/independentlens/muskratlovely/recipes2.html)



3 comments:

Knitting Keep Me sane said...

Yuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate Rodents!!!!!!

They do nothing for us and to see that people actually have recipes to make and consume a rodent is disgusting.

Anonymous said...

Heather -

(Just as a note I got here thru swapbot.)

It's not just MD. Here in MI muskrat is a table food item too. Not for me (EWWWW), but was apparently as big as fish frys in the Downriver area (south of Detroit). Muskrat Dinners stopped because they could no longer import muskrat from Canada.

-Rebecca (bookwrangler)

NH Knitting Mama said...

Hmmm - think I'm all set with that! ha ha...