Zigong Fresh Pot Rabbit

Zigong Fresh Pot Rabbit

　　Zigong Fresh Pot Rabbit is a specialty dish from Zigong City in Sichuan Province. The key to making Fresh Pot Rabbit lies in achieving meat that is tender but not mushy, smooth yet not sticky, with firm texture and full-bodied juiciness that offers a lively bounce—truly embodying the vitality of life. Amidst bold and numbing spiciness and rich umami flavors, the authentic taste of rabbit meat shines through, leaving a pure and lingering aftertaste with absolutely no grassy or gamey undertones.

　　People in Zigong love eating rabbit, and they affectionately call it “tu’er” (little rabbit). In Zigong kitchens, tu’er can be prepared in a variety of ways—such as tangerine peel rabbit, fresh pot rabbit, grilled rabbit, hand-shredded rabbit, and cold tossed rabbit… Visitors from out of town will surely try Zigong’s rabbit dishes, and locals traveling elsewhere often bring back ready-made rabbit dishes. It seems that going without rabbit for even three days might bring on cravings.

　　Fresh Pot Rabbit originates from one of Zigong’s most iconic dishes. It is characterized by being “fresh, fragrant, tender, smooth, and spicy,” with plump meat and rich juices, offering a smooth mouthfeel and delicate texture that melts in the mouth. As a representative of Zigong’s Salt Merchant cuisine culture, it delivers an incredibly delicious and aromatic experience. The innate bold spiciness of Zigong cuisine tingles the taste buds, making you dig in eagerly, sigh in delight, and yet unable to stop. Cooking rabbit meat comes with considerable difficulty. Zigong Fresh Pot Rabbit truly captures the numbing, spicy, fresh, fragrant, tender, and smooth essence of rabbit meat—truly a culinary masterpiece.

　　In 2005, Fresh Pot Rabbit burst onto the market with its distinctive qualities of “freshness, fragrance, tenderness, smoothness, and spiciness,” quickly surpassing previously popular rabbit dishes such as Bishan Rabbit and Hand-Shredded Rabbit. It perfectly combined the Zigong people’s love for rabbit meat and their passion for spice. After nearly 10 years of development, from Huixing Road to the eastern section of Huidong Road, from Xueyuan Street to Dagquekou, it has become ubiquitous, now standing as the most widely available and numerous rabbit-specialty dish in Zigong’s dining scene. Within just a stretch of less than 200 meters along the eastern section of Huidong Road, there are four or five dedicated Fresh Pot Rabbit restaurants, all packed to capacity during dinner rush hours.