Hunter’s Rabbit

In case you’re wondering if we made the rabbit stew recipe we found from Food Network after all of that trouble in cutting a whole rabbit myself, we did make the Hunter’s Rabbit stew. And it was a wonderful and easy dish actually, if you forgo cutting the rabbit yourself. Actually, cutting the rabbit was not that bad. It gave me practice and experience in handling rabbit, not that I would need this skill in the future, but you just never know.

This stew doesn’t require fuzzy ingredients: just one cut-up rabbit, mushrooms, shallots, tomato sauce, beef broth, red wine, flour, parsley flakes, bay leaves, thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper. Pretty much the same ingredients for any stew recipe.

First I chopped the mushrooms – which I think can be doubled up. I love mushrooms, so the more the merrier.

Then I minced the shallots.

Then Hubby got the big skillet and heated up olive oil in it. He put the cut up rabbit into the pan, and basically he was just going to brown the rabbit a little bit.

While the underside was browning, Hubby sprinkled salt and pepper on the rabbit.

Then he turned the rabbit to the other side.

Salted and peppered this side as well…

When both sides had been browned, he set the rabbit in a roasting pan.

When we first thought about trying this recipe, we thought how small rabbit could be. So we decided that we would cook two rabbits instead of one. So this time, Hubby was browning the rabbit that I cut myself. You can see that these did not look as neat as the previous ones. The previous one was frozen, cut-up rabbit in a box.

When the second rabbit was finished browning, it was transferred to the roasting pan as well. Now we had a roasting pan full of rabbits! 🙂 Just don’t think of those cute, floppy ears… you’ll be just fine…

Then Hubby sautéd the minced shallot…

Added the cut-up mushrooms into it…

Until they were softened a little bit.

Then the sautéd mushroom and shallot were transferred into the roasting pan.

Here, Hubby wanted to use those brown bits in the skillet. He added a little beef broth into the skillet to loosen it…

Added a little wine to help deglazing the brown bits…

And then poured it into the roasting pan.

Tomato sauce was added…

Red wine and beef broth were added…

Bay leaf, thyme, parsley and flour were added… and don’t forget to stir the flour, unless you want some dumplings in your stew… Cover the roasting pan with foil and bake it at 350F for 2 to 3 hours. We were supposed to stir it every hour, but we were both tied up elsewhere and we ended up with little dumplings in our stew. 🙂

After three hours…. Delicious looking isn’t it?

We served it with roasted potatoes….

And the rabbit was very tender and succulent.

In case you’re wondering how it tasted… it tasted just like chicken! In a sense, it was like eating chicken breast, but not as dry as chicken breast. I guess you can call rabbit almost the other white meat. 🙂 We definitely will make this stew again, and we’ll just buy the cut-up rabbit rather than the whole rabbit. Until our next experiment!

Print recipe here.

Hunter’s Rabbit
Recipe slightly adapted from Frank Vargas, via Food Network.

Ingredients:
½ cup olive oil
1 rabbit, cut into 6 to 8 portions
Salt and pepper
8 oz. medium size mushrooms, quartered
2 shallots, minced
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch dried thyme
Pinch dried parsley flakes
1 bay leaf
1 cup tomato sauce
1 cup nonalcoholic red wine
1 to 2 cups beef broth
Preparation:
In a large skillet, heat olive oil in medium high heat. Season rabbit with salt and pepper, and brown rabbit on each side. Set aside into a roasting pan.
Sauté shallot and mushroom for two minutes, put into the roasting pan. Deglaze the skillet with a little bit of beef broth and red wine, pour into the roasting pan.
Add tomato sauce, red wine and beef broth into the roasting pan. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, and sprinkle flour. Stir.
Cover with foil, bake for 2 to 3 hours at 350F. Stir every hour. Remove from oven and serve. Can be serve over rice.