New Years Day Rabbit Hunt

Grilled and marinated rabbit (an old rustic Italian recipe...Yum!)
Try it Gents! So firstly sharpen your knives, get the charcoal glowing, aprons on and away we go!!!
You need...

olive oil
a handful of fresh thyme and rosemary leaves picked
zest and juice of 1 lemon
4 garlic cloves peeled
1 x 1 2kg 2 lb rabbit preferably wild jointed
4 thick slices of pancetta
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp honey

Right Gentlemen...
Put your rabbit pieces into a bowl. Using a pestle and mortar, or a liquidizer, bash or whiz up the thyme and rosemary leaves to a pulp, then add the garlic cloves and bash or whiz again. Stir in 8 tablespoons of olive oil, the lemon zest and juice and the honey, and pour this over the rabbit. Put the meat to one side and let it come to room temperature while you light your barbecue.



Now Paddy is going to talk about flavour. Get a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme and tie them together like a little brush. Each time you turn the meat, dab it with a little of the marinade to give you a lovely encrusted layer of flavour. This rabbit is going to be really tasty! See the fun of the Great Outdoors...!



Keeping the marinade to one side, remove the pieces of meat and season with salt and pepper. Sandwich the pancetta between the 2 pieces of belly using 3 skewers. Put the legs and shoulder on the barbecue. When they've been cooking for 10 minutes, put the belly on. After another 10 minutes put the saddle and ribs on. Make sure you turn the meat over every so often. Look after it by controlling the temperature and basting it continuously with the marinade. Cut three-quarters of the way through each kidney and open them out like a book. Cut the liver into 4 pieces and push one piece on to each remaining skewer, followed by a kidney and more liver.



When all the pieces of meat are beautifully cooked, add your skewered bits of kidney and liver on to the barbecue and cook until golden, along with your 2 remaining slices of pancetta. After a few minutes, when the pancetta is browned, put it on top of the meat at the cooler end of the barbie. Now get your guests round the table.



You can serve the rabbit with any white beans, or roast potatoes, or grilled vegetables, or different salads – it really depends on how you feel and what the weather's like. Just put a big bowl of your chosen accompaniment in the middle of the table and serve all the meat on a board. Lovely with a glass of white wine. Simple, honest and jolly good.

ENJOY..!!!!!! Paddy.

Great thread and Paddy I am going to have to try that recipe!

Some country style sour dough bread to break with your hands and share with your chums is great too! Plus a must for mopping up the juices!

Well, now I have a hankering for some bunny. Luckily I have a Spanish restaurant nearby that serves a very tasty Conejo al Salmorejo.

Thank you for the glimpse into your forays gentlemen and especially for some delicious recipes! Be safe!

HoosierDaddy said:

I would rather hunt quail than practically any other game and did so for years over much of the state of Indiana until a horrific blizzard killed off many in the '70s. They have come back now...but sadly permission to hunt farmers land has become a rarity here since many of the old timers have died off.
HD

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Elk hunting is my favorite, something of an obsession actually, but upland game with my German Shorthair Pointer, Casey is a close second. I enjoy working with the dog more than the shooting anymore. Few things in life are better than hunting over your own dogs. The other thing I enjoy about upland game is the social aspect of being able to walk a field with good friends, watching the dogs and discussing all manner of things. We usually start the day early with breakfast at a local diner then out to the field, hunt the morning, break for lunch, hunt the afternoon break around 3:00, clean the birds, have a bourbon, share a great meal and then cap it all with a cigar around the fire pit with more bourbon or a single malt and dogs snoozing by the chairs.
Only problem is Casey will point 20 birds and then look at me in disgust when she only gets to retrieve a half dozen or so due to my poor shotgun skills.

WH1 said:

Elk hunting is my favorite, something of an obsession actually, but upland game with my German Shorthair Pointer, Casey is a close second. I enjoy working with the dog more than the shooting anymore. Few things in life are better than hunting over your own dogs. The other thing I enjoy about upland game is the social aspect of being able to walk a field with good friends, watching the dogs and discussing all manner of things. We usually start the day early with breakfast at a local diner then out to the field, hunt the morning, break for lunch, hunt the afternoon break around 3:00, clean the birds, have a bourbon, share a great meal and then cap it all with a cigar around the fire pit with more bourbon or a single malt and dogs snoozing by the chairs.
Only problem is Casey will point 20 birds and then look at me in disgust when she only gets to retrieve a half dozen or so due to my poor shotgun skills.

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I have given up big game hunting for birds and fly fishing.

Oh...and rabbits.

Been meaning to spend some time learning to fly fish. Down here they are focused on bass with bait casting.

AC rabbit is one of my fave meals in Spain with tomato sauce or creamy almond with white wine sauce or even curried/tandoori sauce, also a big fan of curried kid goat Mmmm!

See above. Dynamite!

For me I like my rabbits and squirrels fried with Fryin Magic in a frying pan with extra virgin olive oil! All my game fish the same way! Your posts have made me very hungry being snowed in right now! I have no rabbits, squirrels, or deer meat at the moment and am drooling over your recipes!

This is the recipe I used for the rabbits taken on New Years Day. Delicious.

RABBIT WITH CREAMY WINE SAUCE

Ingredients:
1 rabbit (1 1/2 to 2 lbs.)
2 slices bacon
1 cup bias-sliced celery
1 med. onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tsp. dried oregano, crushed
1/4 tsp. dried marjoram, crushed
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tbsp. snipped parsley

Directions:
Cut across rabbit just below the front legs. Cut across rabbit just above the back legs. Cut through backbone to halve the pieces with front and back legs attached. You should have 5 pieces. Rinse rabbit; pat dry.

In a 10-inch skillet cook the bacon until crisp and brown. Remove, drain on paper towels, reserving pan drippings in skillet. Crumble bacon and set aside.

Cook rabbit in pan drippings for 10 minutes, turning after 5 minutes to brown evenly. Remove rabbit, reserving drippings.

Cook celery, onion, and garlic in pan drippings until tender. Slowly add the wine, chicken broth, oregano, marjoram, and bay leaf. Bring to boiling, scraping up the bacon bits. Add the rabbit. Reduce heat; cover and simmer about 45 minutes or until rabbit is tender and easily pierced with a fork. Turn rabbit once during cooking. Transfer rabbit and vegetables to a platter and keep warm.

Measure pan juices; reserve 3/4 cup and return it to skillet. Add cream. Bring to boiling and reduce heat to medium. Cook and stir about 6 minutes or until the cream thickens slightly. Pour thickened sauce over the braised rabbit. Sprinkle rabbit with the crumbled bacon and parsley.

scotrace said:

Rabbit always sounds good, but each time I've made it, yuck. I need a good recipe.

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As I understand it, the trick with rabbit is how you balance the rest of the meal, the meat itself having very little nutritional value (one reason stew is such a popular way of serving rabbit).

Not quite correct. Rabbit's sole nutritional failure is its lack of fat. The olive oil/bacon/whathaveyou solve that problem and, of course, lots of vegetables.

Edward said:

As I understand it, the trick with rabbit is how you balance the rest of the meal, the meat itself having very little nutritional value (one reason stew is such a popular way of serving rabbit).

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Hi

An old friend of mine's family used to grow Rabbits to sell to the local Hospital. Patients who needed a high protein diet ate the bunnies. Rabbit is very nutritional, but apparently difficult to cook because it is very lean meat. I've had it breaded and fried, but I didn't cook it myself.

Later

The catch is that it has virtually no fat. I heard tell that one would eventually starve to death if they lived on just rabbit alone. Something like this began to happen to German soldiers in Stalingrad. Apparently healthy young men would simply keel over for no apparent reason. German doctors were sent to determine the cause, and found that the men had virtually no fat stores in their bodies from living on a scant diet of horse meat and bread during the brutal Russian winter.
So in order to avoid a similar fate, hunt wild hogs too.

PADDY said:

I live on the Scottish Borders in a rural area of mountains; high moorland; salmon & trout rivers; beaches & dunes that stretch for miles and too many castles to mention...

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...I do so envy you Paddy. Cast a fly for me.