Anyone experienced the flavour of both and can compare?
Bought a reared rabbit meat from the butcher & cooked taste was very bland and boring. Just wondering if wild rabbit has any flavour and how you might describe it?
Wild rabbit has a stronger taste and is generally tougher - perfect for a pot roast. Although I've only eaten farmed rabbit a couple of times, I've always found it to be a bit dull. I was brought up on roadkill though. Oh, and hare has a little too much erm, character for my liking but is still worth looking out for & works well with plenty of root veg to spread the flavour around.
excuse me, waiter, is this rabbit wild?
ah monsieur , eet wasn't to 'appy when we shot eet....
My local butcher does wild rabbits that he nets himself..
They taste great but my humble cooking skills aren't always up to the job.. It is very very lean and can be a little on the tough side.. It needs some added fat!
Flavour is difficult to describe - very slightly gamey - quite meaty - chicken like texture.
Thanks for the replies (and joke!) and taste descriptions.
Gamey taste - anything like duck or pheasant? Just trying to get a handle on where in spectrum the taste lies.
Well its very slightly gamey - maybe like a slightly gamey turkey leg I suppose- but it is actually quite a unique flavour.
Try some!
I would say the spectum of gaminess is along the lines of:
Chicken, reared bunnys, goose, Roe deer, wild bunny, pheasant, Red Deer, Hare.
I'm sure some would swap a couple around, but that's about right.
Of course, hanging has a huge effect on gaminess (increasing it) and also, with wild animals there is always a lot more variation than farmed animals.
We can get wild rabbit in abundance in this area, but I find them 'stronger tasting' than farmed. The last time I saw farmed rabbit in a supermarket it was dearer than fillet steak, :o
I shall have to give wild rabbit another go, as it is very cheap, and plentiful. ;D
We call the following recipe chicken bunny stew. Although it is for rabbit if we havn't got rabbit we tend to use chicken thighs. It 'eats' very well with mashed potatoes and runner beans (now sadly out of season) if you don't do the dumplings. ;D
RABBIT CASSEROLE WITH DUMPLINGS
4oz streaky bacon rashers rinded and chopped
4 rabbit portions
4 celery stick chopped
2 leeks, trimmer, and sliced
1 bay leaf
8oz carrots sliced
2tbsp plain wholemeal flour
1 pint chicken stock
salt and pepper
Fry the bacon in a flameproof casserole until the fat runs. Add the rabbit and fry gently until browned. Remove from casserole. Add the celery, leeks and bay leaf and carrots and mix well. Sprinkle in the wholemeal flour and stir well. Cook for a minute, then gradually add stock. Bring to boil, stirring continuously. Season to taste. Return rabbit to casserole.
Cover and bake at 170C for about 1½ hours, or until the rabbit is tender.
Dumplings
3oz self-raising flour
1½ shredded beef suet
1tbsp snipped fresh chives
To make the dumplings, mix the self-raising flour, suet, chives and salt and pepper. Add enough cold water to make a soft dough. Twenty to twenty five minutes before the end of the cooking time, shape the dough into 12 balls and place on top of the casserole. Cover again and bake until the dumplings are well risen and cooked through.
There is a wonderful Belgian recipe for rabbit with bacon bits and prunes.
Wild rabbit has a stronger taste than reared but needs a longer cooking time. Farmed rabbit is as bland as battery chicken and needs added flavour from bacon bits or other fat and herbs or spices. It's also fine done with a Dijon mustard sauce to give it some oomph.
Hare is a much stronger flavour - too strong for many - but I've stopped eating it since seeing them running around wild in the fields here. There seem to be fewer each year and I don't want them to disappear.
I don't eat pheasant any more as the ones shot round here are sitting ducks - reared to be shot so fed corn to boost their diet and keep them localised then driven into the air by beaters and dogs for "hunters" to take pot shots. Not exactly fair game.
Yes wild rabbit has a nice flavour, softened with something sweet like prunes. But when I tried cooking it at home last year, I cooked it for about 3 hours and it was still like boot leather! I need to perfect my technique. (And maybe that was an elderly keep fit freak rabbit)
It's ever so cheap - something like £2 for a whole rabbit, skinned and chopped up.
Mind you, if you have to cook it for 4 hours, with the cost of leccy and gas I might find it cheaper to buy fillet steak or lobster or something ;D
i love you ;D ;D ;D
You could do it in a slow cooker Pigeonseed? :-\
A pressure cooker would make it tender in a short time.