The majority of North Americans have a tendency to limit themselves to only a few kinds of meat but there is a large variety of animals that can be cooked and eaten. Today’s topic is cooking a rabbit stew.
Rabbit stew on a plate.
Modern day city dweller might find it hard to accept that one can eat those little cute bunny rabbits, but that is where rabbit meat comes from. People have been eating rabbits since before history.
White domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus).
Rabbit meat can come from farmed rabbits, or wild rabbits that are hunted for their meat.
Rabbit meat is very lean, and high in protein. It is in fact so lean that one usually has to use some other fat to cook it. In the rabbit stew featured in this article I have used some lard, as well as bacon fat (which is also lard) that melted out of the bacon I have used.
The making of a rabbit stew. Pictures starting in the top left corner:
1. Raw rabbit meat from a grocery store.
2. Onions being sauteed on bacon fat.
3. Rabbit meat mixed with the onions.
4. Spices added.
5. Red wine added for cooking.
6. Cook until meat falls off the bones under a lid.
7. The fully cooked rabbit stew.
8. Rabbit stew a a plate.
If you slaughter or hunt your own rabbit you might have to skin it and clean it yourself. The upside is that you do get to use the internal organs in the stew — rabbit liver and kidneys are good to eat.
I have managed to find already cleaned and cut up rabbit meat in a local grocery store, so all I had to do was cook it and eat it.
The recipe is not too complicated. For the amount of rabbit shown which was just over half a kilogram (or slightly more than a pound) I have used one large onion, and two slices of smoked bacon of the kind that is featured in the picture in the Why is Fat Your Friend manifesto on this website.
I started by sauteing the bacon and the chopped up onions in some lard. I have also thrown in a few cloves of garlic, one green pepper chopped up, and some parsley leaves that I have found in the fridge.
When the onions become transparent it is time to add the rabbit meat. Then just add enough ground red peppers to make the color red. Other spices can be added at this time, such as caraway seed, herbs, whatever one likes. Salt should also be added according to taste — care must be taken because smoked bacon can already contain some salt, so really the only way to know when it is enough to taste the stew. After that I have poured in some dry red wine, and a little bit of water and let the whole thing simmer under a lid for about two hours. Stew should be cooked until the meat comes off the bones easily. After about the first hour the smell is indescribable and makes one hungry from a mile away.
It is customary to eat rabbit stew with potatoes on the side, but I am not into eating side dishes, so the rabbit stew in the picture is shown plated by itself.