Simple Rabbit Stew Recipe

The first hurdle you'll have to clear before making this stew is acquiring your rabbit. If you have a .22 rifle and live out in the country, you could always take a DIY approach. If you live in a more urban area, however, you may need to go another route. Rapone says she got her rabbit from Wegmans -– the one in her area is something she describes as, "a foodie paradise for ingredients." If your own supermarket is less paradisaical though, she says that most butchers should be able to order it if you call and make a request. You could also order it yourself from an online butcher and cut out the middleman.

The rest of the ingredients won't be so tough to get. You'll need bacon and some vegetables: mushrooms, carrots, celery, a yellow onion, garlic, and some fresh thyme. You'll also need Dijon mustard, red wine (Rapone uses Cabernet Sauvignon), chicken stock, flour for dredging, and capers to finish things off.

Chop the bacon into small pieces and fry it over medium heat in a large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven. Bear in mind that this is the pot you'll be using to make the entire stew -– while this recipe has multiple steps, it actually is a one-pot dish. When the bacon is almost crispy, remove it from the pan but leave the grease.

Fry the capers in the bacon grease until they're crisp and beginning to burst, then drain them on a paper towel. While the capers are draining, pour all but 1 tablespoon of grease into a bowl. Fry the mushrooms in that tablespoon of grease along with 1 teaspoon of salt. Cook them until they have released their moisture and it has all evaporated. By that point, the mushrooms will have shrunk to about ⅓ of their original size. Remove the mushrooms and set them aside.

Stir the mustard into the vegetables, then add the red wine. Cook the vegetables, stirring and scraping all the browned bits up off the bottom until the liquid has reduced by half. Add the rabbit back to the pot along with the mushrooms, bacon, thyme, chicken stock, and ½ teaspoon of black pepper. Cover the pot with a lid and increase the heat to bring the stew to a boil. Once it starts boiling, turn the heat back down to a simmer and partially uncover the pot. Cook the stew for 90 minutes, then serve it topped with capers. If you have no capers, you can skip these of course, but in Rapone's opinion, "The capers bring a brightness to the dish that is missing otherwise, and since rabbit is rich, it's definitely needed." She does say, though, that as an alternative, "You could also use a splash of red wine vinegar at the end of cooking to add some brightness."

If you don't want to serve the rabbit in pieces, you can always pull the cooked meat out, let it cool a bit, then shred it before stirring it back into the stew. Rapone suggests serving this rabbit stew with crusty bread and dry red wine, which she says will, "make this a perfect meal."