Rabbit and chorizo casserole recipe. Cooked slowly in the slow cooker/crock pot.
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Pheasant and Game | 7 comments
Yummy rabbit casserole
I discovered recently that one of our local butchers sells rabbits that are shot on the local studs. They are cheap too – at £5.00 a pair. Apart from pigeon this probably the cheapest, happy meat that you can buy in the UK.
We used to eat a lot of rabbit when I was growing up. A traditional rabbit stew with vegetables. Then I didn’t eat rabbit for years and I know the reason why. Skinned rabbit looks to me a bit like a small, skinned dog or cat.
Over the past year or so, I’ve put aside this silly nonsense and discovered the delights of rabbit again. I think that this is our best rabbit recipe to date. The choritzo adds a zing to the dish and the pearl barley brings softness. We happily ate it two nights running with seconds – so one rabbit would easily feed four hungry people cooked in this way.
Economical, low fat and above all very tasty indeed.
I served it with garden peas, baked potatoes and dumplings.
Rabbit and chorizo casserole
Ingredients:
I rabbit, skinned and jointed into 4 pieces
1 small red onion – skinned and chopped
150g of celeriac – skinned and chopped
50g of celery – chopped into 1cm chunks
250g carrots – skinned and chopped into 2cm lengths
90g of chorizo – skinned, halved and sliced thinly
100g of streaky unsmoked bacon – chopped
6 whole garlic cloves – skinned
1 tsp of dried thyme
Half a tsp of Lea and Perrins (Worcestershire Sauce)
Half a tsp of mixed herbs
4 heaped tsp of plain flour
3 pints of hot, good chicken stock – I didn’t have any so used 3 Gallo chicken stock cubes and 1 tsp of Marigold vegetable stock powder
Lashings of white pepper (at the end)
Method:
Roll the rabbit pieces in the flour and set the rabbit and the remaining flour aside.
Prepare the vegetables and place in the bottom of the slow cooker/crock pot. Sprinkle over the remaining flour and stir very well.
Add the garlic cloves, thyme and mixed herbs and stir well.
Sprinkle over the Lea and Perrins.
Add the bacon pieces and chorizo and stir well.
Place the rabbit quarters on top of the vegetables.
Pour over the hot stock and stir to make sure that it has reached the base of the slow cooker.
Set the knob to auto and cook for 4-5hours. If you don’t have an auto knob set to high for an hour – it should be bubbling by then and switch to low for 3-4 hours. The rabbit should be falling off the bones. Just before serving season to taste. Forget black pepper – lots of ground white pepper goes very well with this dish.
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Wow, that looks incredible! I’ve never tried rabbit but it’s on my list.
Ooh, this sounds fantastic. It’s got all of my favourite ingredients AND dumplings. Must try and get my hands on rabbit soon and dust off my slow cooker!
I used to eat alot of Rabbit, but with myxy being so common nowadays, a few “unscrupulous” characters have found rabbit to be a nice easy little earner! – I dont want to put folk off, but if you buy bunny, always make sure you buy it with it`s coat and head on, that way you can tell if it`s clean. You cant detect a diseased one after it`s been skinned and jointed!
Fiona, this recipe looks delish! Just one question – you refer to pearl barley in the intro but then I can’t see any reference to quantity or cooking time? I’m relatively inexpert at using pearl barley, hence my question! I hope I’m not just failing to see something obvious.
That recipe sounds wonderful Fiona, I too am a great fan of rabbit & have it quite often.I wii definitely try the chorizo rather than the smoked bacon I use at the moment
By the way I think you have a great deal on the price as in this part of Oxfordshire my butcher charges £4.99 for one locally shot young animal & that isn’t even in the really ritzy butchers…..!!!
I really like rabbit too – and you can get it in the supermarket in France – but BB and Cupcake won’t eat it. Cupcake is only nine, so she thinks of little bunnies. I’m determined to make a rabbit casserole when I am next in France though. I imagine it would be lovely with chorizo. Well, Happy Valentines day to you both, I hope you’ve had a good one. KG.
This sounds yum – why have I never slow cooked anything with chorizo in it? I’ve just eaten dinner but feel hungry again thinking the spicy, smokiness of the chorizo permeating through the falling apart meat… drool. 🙂