Rabbit and Hare Cuts

Appears in

The Cook's Companion: A step-by-step guide to cooking skills including original recipes

Published 1991

About

A cleaned and skinned rabbit weighing 1.7kg (3½lb) will serve 4 people; a 2kg (4½lb) hare will serve 6 people.

*Cooking method*	*Temperature*	*Time*
Roast
Saddle	180°C, 350°F, Gas Mark 4	35-40 minutes for up to 1kg (2lb) 40-50 minutes up to 2kg (4½lb)
Casserole
All joints including saddle	160°C, 325°F, Gas Mark 3	1-1½ hours, depending on age

Flavouring Game

Olive oil mixed with lemon juice, black pepper, garlic and a few herbs (but never salt which draws the juices out) is an easy and excellent marinade for game. A little sherry vinegar is also an effective addition.
Marinades can be liquid or more like a thick paste of seasonings – this can be a generous mixture of spices and herbs moistened with a little lemon juice, red wine or fruit vinegar and oil, which is smeared on to a joint and left for the flavours to be absorbed before roasting.
Joints of game can be immersed for several hours or days in liquid marinades containing not only oil, lemon juice and seasoning but wine as well and will become substantially tenderized and fuller flavoured.
More complicated liquid marinades can be made rather like a stock by cooking vegetables such as carrots, onions and celery with herbs and seasonings in an oil and wine mixture, then leaving to cool before using.
The strong taste of hare benefits from a rather sweet but garlicky marinade and then by casseroling gently with both sweet and sharp ingredients -dried apricots, onions, yellow peppers and crushed juniper berries are a good combination, with ground cinnamon and a teaspoon of whole caraway seeds, and a little orange juice as the liquid.
Rabbit is often cooked with mustard and cream – I casserole joints with whole shallots or pickling onions, wholegrain mustard, green peppercorns and a glass of sweet cider. When the rabbit is cooked I add double cream and bubble up the sauce for a minute.

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