I've only eaten rabbit once and it was bathed in garlic butter so I don't really remember it. Besides the "tastes like chicken hehe" stereotype, is there any knock-your-socks-off dish made with rabbit where it's center stage?
Maltese thick rabbit stew (think: ragu) is delicious. And as mentioned in a parallel thread, hare is fairly common in Finland as well.
The meat is gamey and indeed very lean, but when you slow cook it to the point where it falls off the bone... yum. Tends to work better with roasted potatoes than mash.
> First time I heard of rabbit being considered to taste like chicken, they taste nothing alike.
They don't. It's just a reference to the standing joke that any meat that is unfamiliar "tastes like chicken" as a generic way of describing meat taste.
There is some base to it. Chicken breast and rabbit are both very lean therefore lacking the fat which gives it the distinctive flavor of the animal. All lean meat basically tastes the same.
Around Lisbon, it's usually stewed with red wine and tomato and spices (coelho à caçador). It can also be fried or grilled but I rarely see it cooked that way.
It's the kind of meat that is, generally speaking, better prepared in more rustic versions as you move inland, though -- see e.g. [1], where it's cooked in clay, together with kidneys, heart, liver, and the head.
My mother made rabbit stew once or twice that I can remember. I remember liking it OK, but it was nothing spectacular.
With the price of meat I've given some thought to keeping rabbits and/or chickens but it's likely not worth the effort unless you truly cannot afford meat any other way.
Yes. In fact, the famous ultra-orthodox traditional paella that Valencians stick to has rabbit. But many other variants do as well. In my family we often eat a simpler version from Murcia with no chicken, but more rabbit, called just "rice with rabbit", and IMHO it's even better (https://okdiario.com/recetas/arroz-conejo-murcia-2538513). The best rice you can have without seafood in it :) And I've always liked fishing for the rabbit's liver.
At one of my ancestral villages in Galicia, rabbit empanada is also a thing, and tastes amazing. But it's seen less and less often because it's messy to eat (it's cooked with bones so you have to open the empanada, remove the bones and close it again) so people tend to use fillings without that problem now. (You can cook it without the bones, there are also areas where they do that, but in that specific area they shun that variant).
The european rabbit (and the domesticated rabbit, which descends from it) is native to the Iberian peninsula. There are ~20 extant species called rabbits all over the world (most though not all leporids outside of Lepus, the true hares).
well they are native almost everywhere but according to legend it was named i-spn-ya (Land of the Rabbits) by the Phoenician although some suggest that SPN could also have meant North instead of rabbits so land of the north.
If I recall, the word 'España' or 'Hispania' refers to an old word for 'hyrax', for which rabbit were mistaken for. Could be apocraphyl but it's a nice idea.
My favorite is mustard rabbit (Lapin à la moutarde). It's basically rabbit stewed in white wine, cream or butter and mustard. Mustards helps make a really thick sauce and you can use a copious amount since its flavor mellows down when you cook it.
Brunswick stew is hearty[0], usually rabbit or squirrel traditionally, but these days with chicken. The Maltese variety as mentioned elsewhere is called Stuffat Tal Fenek as is very nice, having tried it in Malta.
Lapin à la moutarde (Rabbit in a mustard sauce - Burgundian dish) - not sure you can say the rabbit is as front and center as you’d like - but my favorite preparation served with a starch - get the boneless loin.
Honestly fried rabbit legs (southern style fried chicken but rabbit essentially) is also pretty good.
you need an example of what you consider such a dish.
Rabbits are pretty decent, as a kid we used to have quite a few of them at the village (along with all other kind of animals, incl. lambs, pigs, and goats). Either way it's rather easy to tell the meat apart and most meat(s) can be prepared to be delicious.
You can coat the rabbit meat with Dijon mustard and cook it to make "Lapin à la moutarde" too!
It's not a knock-your-socks-off dish, I don't think the meat has enough qualities for such a dish (not enough of a distinct taste or texture or quantity), but it's always nice to have!
Hare is pretty common game here in Finland and I think I must have eaten that fairly regularly when I was little but I have absolutely no recollection what it actually tasted like.
Only recipe I've seen was indeed a stew where the ingredients were almost "one rabbit, unholy amounts of garlic".
I used to get it at Cafe Brussels in Houston. They used to have a dish with braised rabbit leg called Le Lapin aux Pruneaux. Instead of a beer stew they made it sweet and savory with prunes, raisins, onions, and carrots. Sooooo goooood.
Interesting: I had it one time in San Francisco and cannot remember what it tasted like, but I remember the dish was a dark red. I'd really like to try it again, but I've never seen it on a menu since.
(I ordered it because of my rule: If I see an animal on a menu that I haven't eaten before, I order it.)
There's the traditional German rabbit/hare stew Hasenpfeffer (literally "hare pepper" as hare or rabbit and pepper are the main ingrediants). You may remember it as the dish at least one of Bugs Bunny's foes wanted to make from him.
It used to be more common in the U.K. but it’s pretty rare now. Stews and braising were the traditional way to cook it as older ones are kind of tough.
