Cooking with Jonny69: Rabbit stew

[Jonny69]

It's game season

I thought I wasn't going to get any game this year because my only source is my mum, who normally brings me up a load from her farm shop. Haven't seen her much this year due to work commitments, life and stuff but she came to stay and brought me a rabbit and a pheasant, both gutted and skinned. She knows what field both of these animals came from and the farmer told her the pheasant was a young bird and will roast well. I like knowing things like that

So the rabbit became stew last night. I forget where the original recipe came from, but I've made it a few times and tweaked it to taste because it's the way I like my rabbit stews! It's a normal stew base of onion, carrot, celery and garlic with the addition of coarse Dijon mustard and double cream at the end. This works really well with the rabbit, which is quite strong and gamey when you get wild ones like this.

I'll be stewing the front and back legs and keeping the loins for later, which will be wrapped in bacon and pan-fried, so first you need to joint the rabbit:



Inside you can see the kidneys and liver, which you can just pull out. I don't like them so they get discarded. You can pretty much see where to cut in this pic, along the edge of the muscles like you would a chicken and the legs just come off:



There is a way to take the loins off in one go but I haven't figured it out yet, so I get two long ones, at the top of the board. The piece of meat above the front legs is like loin meat and comes from the inside of the animal, which you can see under the ribs:



Rabbit has a very thin but very tough sinew covering the meat. It takes a few minutes to pull it off but it makes it much nicer to eat. You can pinch it up like the skin on the back of your hand, pierce it with the tip of a knife and peel it off. Then give it a rinse and make sure there's no fur hiding anywhere

The base of the stew is:
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped (optional)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 thick rashers of fat streaky bacon, chopped into lardons (use back bacon if no streaky)



First up, fry some colour onto the lardons and put them in the stew pot:



Fry some colour onto the vegetables, which I did in the stew pot:



Dust the rabbit portions with plain flour and brown the outside:





They go into the pot with about 250ml of chicken or pork stock (home-made is much better for this) and a tablespoon of coarse Dijon mustard, and this needs to cook for 1.5 - 2 hours or 20 minutes in the pressure cooker. By this time the meat should be able to fall off the bone. Then stir in a dash of double cream and check the seasoning:



To go with it, I made some crispy fried bubble-and-squeak patties and doshed the stew over the top...





Stew always looks like Saturday night street puke when I photograph it, so try and use your imagination

[Tak]

oh yum! I love rabbit but have never tried to cook it

[BBx]

Dunno if I could cook rabbit...

BB x

[Tak]

I think I'd like to observe someone cooking it to start with or at least already have it skinned/boned

[Will]

NOM!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jonny69]

Originally Posted by Takhisis

I think I'd like to observe someone cooking it to start with or at least already have it skinned/boned

No different to jointing a chicken though. It just smells a bit different and they don't pull the giblets out where mine come from

[Tak]

You assume I've jointed a chicken ...

[Pheebs]

OM NOM NOM!

Lush! Big thumbs up!

[volospian]

That looks fab. I love rabbit, but I'm not allowed to eat it in the house as Sue keeps house rabbits...

I have to wait until we go out somewhere and it's on the menu.