Rabbit Ragu

Living here on the farm, we eat a lot of wild game as part of our diet.  We have three beagles that love to chase rabbits around the farm and we have lots of rabbits that love to eat our vegetables.  And so it is that the dogs and I get some exercise during rabbit season.  I shoot a few rabbits to keep the population in check a bit and to keep some lean healthy meat in the freezer.  Truth be told, I exercise the dogs way more than I actually shoot any rabbits, but a few weeks ago the rabbits ate every last bit of our spinach and radishes that were growing in our high tunnel.   Last weekend was the last weekend of rabbit season and I thought I had better take advantage of the last opportunity to thin out the rabbit population.

Every once in awhile I come across a recipe that deserves an inclusion in the blog. I've been looking for something different to do with the wild rabbit meat I have on hand.  Seems like I've been kind of stuck in a rut ever since I came up with a rabbit and gravy recipe that I really love.  A couple months ago I came upon a recipe for rabbit ragu.  I've been wanting to try it ever since and this weekend was the perfect opportunity.  I browsed the internet for more rabbit ragu recipes and I finally settled on one from Emeril Lagasse via www.foodnetwork.com.  It is called Rabbit Ragu with Pappardelle Pasta.  Of course I made a few minor changes, but the inspiration certainly came from this recipe.  This recipe was certainly somewhat of a labor of love and definitely not something that could be put together for a weeknight dinner, but you could certainly do the long steps ahead of time and crockpot the rest.  Today though I had some time and so this is how it went.

I took two wild rabbits and deboned the meat and cut it into chunks.  I even removed the silver skin off the loin muscle.  Probably not necessary but I did it.  Actually I have not deboned a rabbit before and I have to admit it was a bit tedious.  I think I actually like better the method of cooking it until the meat is tender and then pulling it off the bone.  But I do see an advantage of deboning first.  There were no shards of bone in the meat like there sometimes are when pulling off cooked meat.  I also did this step the day before so that was a time saver today.

Then I seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and tossed the meat in flour (sorry Emeril, I just used plain ol' all purpose flour).

Next I browned the meat in a little olive oil, about 10 minutes, until browned and nearly cooked through.  Removed the meat from the pan and set aside.

I added a little more olive oil to the pan (just enough to coat the bottom).  I find it hard to believe the recipe calls for about 1/2 cup of olive oil at this step.  Wow!  That seems like it would be an oily mess.  Whatever.  I then added the 2 cups of minced onion, 1 cup of minced celery and 1 cup of minced carrot.  Pretty colors!

This next step is definitely the "labor of love" part.  I don't think I have ever caramelized vegetables to this extent.  One time I made a deep dark caramel colored roux for a gumbo recipe and I remember that took a long time.  I read up on caramelizing veggies and it convinced me that this was a step that needed to be taken seriously.  And  so, 50 minutes later I ended up with some beautiful caramel colored vegetables.  Perfect!

For the next part I added 2 pint jars of home canned whole tomatoes with the water/juice.  I mashed them in the pan with a hand potato masher.  Add to that the 1 tsp dried oregano and about 2 teaspoons of  fresh chopped garlic (I like garlic more than 1 tsp worth), 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (I had no red pepper flakes), no rosemary (I hate rosemary) and no bay leaves.  I also added 1 cup of red wine and cooked this for another 30 minutes, reducing the liquid a bit.

After this, I added the browned wild rabbit meat, the tomato/veggie/wine sauce and only 1 cup of broth (I used homemade turkey broth because it is what I had on hand) and put this all in the crockpot.  30 minutes on high and then 5 hours on low.  When it was time for dinner, I got the handy dandy potato masher out again and used it to break up the chunks of meat a bit.  Served over pasta.

I really really REALLY liked this recipe.  Mike thought there was too much heat from the cayenne, but he does not like spicy food much at all.  I thought it was just right.  A slight touch of heat/flavor without being too noticeable.  Maybe next time I will try it without the cayenne, but it will need more salt or garlic or something else if the cayenne is not there.