Instructions:
Fried Young Groundhog
Cut up and soak in salt water half a day. Dry with absorbent paper towels. Dredge in flour seasoned with salt and pepper and fry like a rabbit.
Barbecued Groundhog
If you happen to get an older groundhog, you can make a delicious barbecue. Soak in salt water; drain and rinse off the salt water. Add more water and stew in a covered pot until well done.
Pick the meat off the bones. Mix with your favorite barbecue sauce and enjoy the best sandwiches you’ve tasted.
Roasted Groundhog
Start with cold salt water in a pot, add the young groundhog and bring to a boil for 15 minutes. Toss out the hot water and rinse the groundhog.
Then, starting with new cold salt water, parboil again but don’t cook it all the way. Rinse; put it into an open roaster and bake at 400 degrees about 20 minutes, until nice and brown.
For extra flavor add a package of dehydrated vegetable soup mix to the water in the roasting pan, or put sliced onions in the roasting water and add some sweet potatoes when half-roasted. This makes a good, complete meal in one cooking.
Groundhog-Hide Shoelaces
One friend remembers groundhog being “the only fresh meat we’d have for a while each summer when growing up.”
Best of all he remembers how “Dad would scrape the hair off the hide and put the hide down in a bucket of ashes. Then he’d pour water in on the ashes and let it soak a few days until the hide was soft. Then he’d cut slices from the hide so we’d have new shoelaces.”
He did say that the groundhog-hide shoelaces would stretch with use, and “that’s why briar hoppers always carry pocket knives to trim them off.”
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