Cooking Rabbit Stew

Introduction

My first encounter with Rabbit meat was at the Summer Bushmoot (2007) and I didn't really enjoy the taste. Scott my friend was sure it was down to the way it was cooked and he was keen to reintroduce me to this meat and seeing as I was surprised I didn't like it myself, I was happy to give it a second chance!.. after all I've enjoyed every variety of meat up until then!

Scott purchased a prepared Rabbit from our superb local farm shop: Trevillery Farm The Rabbit cost a mere £2.10 and looked like some lovely meat. The Rabbit was already prepared for cooking; skinned & head, feet & guts removed etc. Edible organs like heart/liver etc. still in place, however we didn't want these organs in our recipe so I left them on a couple of animal trails.

Scott prepared the Rabbit further by cutting the legs into joints and then utilising the back meat cutting it into small chunks for the stew.

Stew Recipe

• 1 rabbit

• 4 beef sausages

• 1 large potato

• 1 swede

• 3 carrots

• 2 parsnips

• 1 leek

• 2 small onion

• 3 chicken stock cubes

• 6 garlic cloves

• water

The Rabbit and Sausages were briefly fried to lightly brown the meat as you will see below, then the ingredients are added to the water and stock and stewed for roughly two hours on the campfire with plenty of heat. Photos show below.

Quick fry of the Rabbit

We quickly fried and browned the rabbit meat before adding it to the stew-pot,
simply fried in a small bit of oil, plenty of heat keeping the meat moving in the pan,
we did the larger parts of the meat first then all the small pieces.

Quick fry of the Sausages

We quickly fried and browned the sausages before adding them to the stew-pot.
Again small amount of oil and plenty of heat, keep them moving. Somehow
its always me who's left looking after frying the sausages!...
always willing to keep a keen eye on the food!

And onto the fire it goes!

I had a nice bed of embers glowing red-hot waiting for the stew pot.
This time we had hot water ready in a thermos-flask for the stew, so everything warm,
the coals steadily heated the stew and as it came to a boil I re-stoked the fire with fresh wood.

Kept the fire going slow and steady for the next two hours roughly.

This is the stew nearly finished.

The Stew was lovely and I certainly enjoyed the rabbit meat this time round. The mash-like stuff you can see in the bottom right of the plate is a small separate stew I had going on the camp-fire; just more of the same vegetables, stewed nice and hot and reduced right down, baby-food texture but with hansome flavours!

We left our camp and wood in the same state as we found it, remember to respect the land you visit, do not scar or damage our natural beauty. The only things we left were a couple of meat scraps and bones on occasional animal-trails a nice way of giving a little back to nature when it has provided us with a lovely meal.