How to cook a rat Louisiana style

I was at a dinner party a few nights ago talking to a group of strangers and in the course of discussion we got to talking about Louisiana and my childhood growing up there and blah blah blah. One way or another, and I can't exactly recall how, we got to talking about the nutria. What's a nutria you ask? Well, it's sort of a cross between a rat and an otter and/or beaver, a big fat water rat essentially...



Nutria are, to put it mildly, the stuff of lore back home. They are also, above all, a public nuisance in south Louisiana and everywhere else they've popped up (in Jersey a mad panic ensued upon their discovery in the state's wetlands), so much so that the state of Louisiana allocated millions of dollars a few years back for nutria culinary research, an effort to manufacture some sort of nutritional value to attach to the nutria, which would then increase demand for nutria meat, which would then entice hunters and trappers to pursue the nutria for monetary profit, which would then help to control the increasing out of control nutria population in the state.

It hasn't been, ugh, very successful. Imagine that! We Cajuns will throw just about anything into a pot and serve it over rice, but we tend to draw the line at things whose scientific classification falls into the order of rodentia. But Louisiana's public officials, God bless their little hearts, tried their best. Part of their efforts were nutria cooking instructional videos hosted by renowned local chefs, one of which was dug up by one of the people I met at the aforementioned dinner party, which she then in turn was nice enough to forward to me.

So here ya go folks...here's what you've all been waiting for...how to cook a rat...Louisiana style...