A week ago I bought a crock-pot on a whim and started trying out recipes. This rabbit stew recipe caught my eye, so I decided to give it a go. The cuter the animal the tastier the meat... right?
My apologies to bunnies everywhere
The ingredients, according to the recipe, are as follows:
1 rabbit
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
425 g diced tomatoes
1 cup red wine
1 cup water
100 g button mushrooms, sliced
125 g shortcut bacon, sliced
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 cup flour
I decided to add kale for extra nutrients and chicken bouillon cubes for extra flavor. I also used real apple-wood smoked bacon as opposed to cancer shortcut bacon. In retrospect, I think a few more bay leaves would've been a good idea as well.
~$10 Dancing Bull Cabernet Sauvingon 2010
For the wine I went with a cheap California Cabernet Sauvignon from the grocery store. I'm by no means a wine guy but I would describe this wine as somewhat dry with a slight fruity/sweet background and short finish. I'm not sure what type of wine would go best with this dish but I've been told that dry red wine is your best bet.
Like I said, I'm not a wine guy
The actual preparation of the stew is extremely straightforward. First and foremost you're going to want to rub some salt into the meat. Do your best to massage the salt all up in that bunny carcass to help the flavor penetrate. After that, throw the whole rabbit in the crock-pot and grind black pepper over it. Next, chop your vegetables (i prefer chunkier vegetables in stew) and mix together all of the ingredients (besides flour) in a huge bowl. Once everything is mixed together, add it all to the crock-pot.
Everything in the crock-pot prior to cooking
Set your crock-pot to low and be patient, it'll be 6-8 hours before its ready. As tempting as it may be to open the lid and smell/admire the stew as it cooks try your best not to. It causes massive heat loss and delays cooking.
Take this opportunity to all-in some scrubs on ladder... or down the rest of the wine
About 30 minutes before its done cooking, mix flour and water together (as described in the original recipe link) to form a paste. Adding this paste thickens the stew and gives it a more hearty texture.
When its done, the rabbit meat will fall right off the bone. Since you're cooking the rabbit whole there will be plenty of bones, though not nearly as many as in a fish dish. Be careful not to choke on one of the smaller bone segments.
Some people are apprehensive about trying rabbit because they fear a gamey taste. In reality, the meat is very mild and tastes nearly indistinguishable from chicken. It is also worth noting that rabbit is a high protein, low fat meat.
A bowl of the final product, ended up a bit less thick than i expected
This dish is really easy and quite delicious. If you have a crock-pot and access to rabbit meat its worth trying out. If not, go buy a crock-pot and set some rabbit traps or something.
mmmmmmm
I'll probably write more food/crockpot related blogs in the future so be on the lookout for that. Also this is my first blog on TL so forgive me if the formatting is suboptimal. Cheers.
Awesome blog. I love rabbit when its cooked right. You should try doing smoked rabbit, or a non rabbit stew dish. Its really hard to get right, but when you do it tastes amazing.
On September 25 2012 13:06 FXOBoSs wrote: So now we do indeed know who killed roger rabbit.
Awesome blog. I love rabbit when its cooked right. You should try doing smoked rabbit, or a non rabbit stew dish. Its really hard to get right, but when you do it tastes amazing.
thumbs up here..!!
Thanks man. I've been wanting to buy a smoker forever, its only a matter of time until I actually buy one. Smoked meat is one of mankind's greatest achievements.
I donno why but after reading this and seeing your end dish and my mouth water I think I'm going to start to try and cook something.. You just seam like a casual type of guy that's like "lets make something today rather then pizza" and your just talking about like adding little tibits of stuff and what you think you could improve on, the wine and what not and it just really makes me want to try it to lol.
Thanks for the blog and hope you enjoyed your meal!
On September 25 2012 15:42 BongChambers wrote: I donno why but after reading this and seeing your end dish and my mouth water I think I'm going to start to try and cook something.. You just seam like a casual type of guy that's like "lets make something today rather then pizza" and your just talking about like adding little tibits of stuff and what you think you could improve on, the wine and what not and it just really makes me want to try it to lol.
Thanks for the blog and hope you enjoyed your meal!
You should go for it man! If you give cooking a shot I think you'll be surprised at what you're able to create. Crock-pots are a good starting point because they're cheap and a lot of the recipes require little to no preparation. Hell I have almost no cooking experience and yet I've still been able to make some pretty amazing meals. Let me know if you decide to try it out ^^
On September 26 2012 05:55 Waxangel wrote: man I've really slacked off on ripping people for their poor lightning in food photographs
Yep the lighting/quality is pretty bad in all of the photos. I would appreciate any tips you may have for making the lighting less shitty, so by all means rip on me ^_^
The use of flash probably did more harm than good, but the room was pretty dark at the time.
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