Muskrats still popular dish on Maryland’s Eastern Shore
GOLDEN HILL, Md. — The 30second demonstration was ghoulish and more than a little gross. Still, Marcus Flowers, 63, drew applause when he expertly skinned a muskrat, showing the form that won him the World Championship Skinning Contest in 2003 at the annual National Outdoor Show.
The crowd sitting on folding chairs and bleachers in the South Dorchester K-8 gym sent up a raucous cheer when he raised the naked carcass into the air in triumph with blood-smeared hands on Feb. 29.
Mr. Flowers grew up skinning muskrats on Hoopers Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where many have made their living fishing, crabbing and oystering for generations.
“It’s just something we’ve always done,” he said of skinning, a tradition rooted deep in the soggy, low-lying lands of Dorchester County. “You get it in your blood, and love it.”
The more you skin, the better you get, he added. One year he trimmed the hide off 1,500 muskrats during the season, which runs from Jan. 1 to March 15. His daughter-in-law, Dakota, is pretty good at it, too, adding the 2020 women’s skinning title to her previous five wins.
His sister, Rhonda Aaron, is a five-time champion with a knack for turning the rodent meat into something some would call delicious: She’s won the show’s muskrat cooking contest so many years running that in 2018 organizers decided to hold a venison cooking contest instead.
Skinning contestants must provide their own muskrats, which must be killed at least two hours before the show. To win, they have to skin five muskrats in a row the fastest. To keep the art alive, organizers have added junior and beginners muskrat skinning categories to the competition.
“We want to keep young people coming in so the tradition doesn’t die out,” said chairman Buddy Oberender.
While the state muskrat population has held fairly steady over the past decade, not as many are being harvested. An estimated 13,002 rats were harvested in 2018 compared with 58,493 in 2008, according to the Maryland Department of Natural
Resources.
Muskrat skinning and/or eating probably sounds weird to Western Pennsylvanians, whose outdoor pursuits are more apt to involve deer. But this part of Maryland is full of waterways and marshlands, and for centuries, watermen have trapped the muskrats that build their lodges in them, selling their pelts to fur buyers like T. Zander & Sons of New Jersey for export overseas, where they’re turned into gloves, hats and other clothing.
Harriet Tubman famously had to set and check muskrat traps in the chilly swamps near the tidewater Maryland farm she was enslaved on as a child; a bronze sculpture in the new Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center near Blackwater National Water Refuge memorializes the forced labor performed barefoot.
As for the rodent’s pungent, funky-tasting meat? It’s called
muskrat for a reason: the rodents, which weigh about 2 pounds, produce a smelly substance from their anal glands that can’t completely be cooked out, making the meat an acquired taste.
Modern Farmer describes the flavor this way: “a little fishy, a hint of metal, followed by that weird smell found at the bottom of a bag of forgotten spinach.”
Still, locals prize the lean, dark crimson meat as a delicacy. According to the show’s program, muskrat was considered “the farmers greatest winter crop” in the 1930s, with the meat sold commercially as the more palatable-sounding “marsh
rabbit.” Today, you can find it at community dinners and local restaurants throughout the season. There’s also an annual Crawfish Boil & Muskrat Stew Fest in nearby Cambridge. It took place on March 1 at Sailwinds Park and included a muskrat leg eating contest and the meat gussied up into tacos and eggrolls.
Phil Tilghman, a senior warden at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in nearby Quantico, remembers when the church drew as many 800 or more diners to the annual muskrat dinners that started more than 80 years ago.
They’ve gone by the wayside as old-timers have died off, he said. But the water rat still calls out to parishioners from a stained-glass window depicting English clergyman and abolitionist
Thomas Bray. Does he miss the dinners?
“I can take it or leave it,” Mr. Tilghman said, noting that some people love the meat so much that they eat it with their fingers like fried chicken.
Count Dave Goff of Laurel among its biggest fans. On a recent Friday, he offered to finish a reporter’s $14.25 muskrat dinner at Dayton’s Family Restaurant in Salisbury after noticing there was no way she was going to eat more than a nibble.
Like most of the 100 or so diners who line up for the dinners every Tuesday and Thursday during the season, the retired railroad worker first started eating muskrat as a kid.
“They only eat plants and roots,” he pointed out, making it fairly healthful. But he understood my reservations.
“You either like it or you hate it,” he said as he sucked a chunk of muskrat meat from a thigh bone. “There ain’t no in between.”
Dayton’s “de-musks” the rats by soaking them in saltwater for 36 hours before parboiling with spices, said Gordy Weitzel. He had never tasted muskrat before buying the restaurant 16 years ago, and now he eats it two or three times a year. It’s served traditional style, with hominy and turnip greens under a thick gravy flavored with sage, bay leaves and pepper. Smart diners make a reservation.
“We’ve had people come from as far away as Philly to eat it, and busloads of 20,” he said.
While the skinning contest is the marquis event, the Outdoor Show also draws those eager to line up for the $1 muskrat samples and $5 leg-rib combos served alongside locally sourced crab sandwiches, oyster fritters and crab stew in the school cafeteria.
For some, like Donna Blann of Wolford, Md., a muskrat dinner brings back treasured memories. “My dad used to trap it, and my mom cooked it all the time when I was little,” she said as she picked at a foam bowl of meat in the crowded lunchroom.
Ever since her mother died, she doesn’t get it as much, so eating at the show makes her happy. “It tastes like my childhood.”
If you’ve ever wondered what you can do with a muskrat besides parboil it, the answer is plenty. To secure her many wins in the “specialty” cooking contest catergory, Ms. Aaron has stir-fried the meat with peppers, water chestnuts and sesame skillet sauce; stuffed it into a pot pie; added it to a Cajun rice creole; and used it for tacos. But her favorite way to make “rat” is how she prepared it for celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern on an episode of “Bizarre Foods America” — barbecued.
“The only way I don’t like it is with cheese,” she said.
Her 92-year-old mother and co-competitor, Nellie
Flowers, sticks to the traditional methods of braising, parboiling and stewing it with onion, sage and spices. However it’s prepared, the cook must be careful to first remove the musk glands.
Mrs. Flowers entered her first muskrat skinning contest in 1938, when she was just 10 years old, and, if pressed by her daughter, could probably still compete in the Old Timers division.
Ms. Aaron, a retired library worker who now delivers mail for the post office, honed her skills as a child, too. Her grandfather and uncles lived off the land by farming and fishing the Chesapeake Bay in the warm months and trapping seven days a week when the weather turned cold.
“When we were little, we’d stay with our grandparents on their farm and they’d bring in sacks of muskrats,” she said.
After the animals were dried on the floor in front of a large wood stove, she and her brother would help take the feet, hands and tails off with a hatchet.
These days, Ms. Aaron might trap and skin 400 or more muskrats a season for a list of customers who start calling in November. The morning of the skinning contest, she took the hides off of 28 rats.
She said she’s good at cooking muskrat because, well, she’s been doing it forever. And it’s also good for you.
“When people used to eat wild stuff, you never heard of high cholesterol,” she said.
While it saddens her so many people are unfamiliar with the tradition of skinning and eating muskrat, she’s not worried it’s going anywhere soon.
“My grandson is 2, and I’ve already given him a butter knife to work with,” she said. “We have to honor the heritage.”