Hare recipe?

[GSPhunter]

In australia they're considered a pest and all I've ever really done with them after the dogs have caught them or after I've shot them is to feed them back to the dogs.

I did hear Marco Pierre white once say that Hare is his favourite meat so I just it was worth seeing if anyone in the UK cooks them and if so what recipes you use.

I love food and will try anything at least once!

I'm heading out after work to try and stick one with the bow.

 

[Apthorpe]

Yes. Delicious. Will try to find the recipe I use, which I got from a chef I used to occasionally shoot a few for.

 

[jubnut]

I get a few, usually just bone them out and mince the meat, it makes a good bolognese or chilli. Or I add it in to venison burgers.

I put it in a pie with Stilton and red wine once. That was nice but really rich.

There's only so much cheesy hair pie you can eat at any one time.

 

[finnbear270]

Last Hare I shot was around mid 70's, we like to see a few round here, they are also great warning flags for Charlie!, I used to roast them just like a chicken, let them cool, chill a little in the fridge, carve & put slices on well buttered bread, dab of mint sauce / jelly ... just tasted like best lamb.

 

[ben0850]

I shoot quite a few hare as we have a healthy population that regularly needs thinning out. A fantastic recipe I use all the time is by Giorgio Locatelli called pappardelle alle lepre. Essentially marinated hare in red wine for 24 hours before being slow cooked for around 4 then taken off the bone and shredded back into the sauce to make a Ragu.

 

[Pine Marten]

It is one off-the-wall greatest meats there is. That's why I was so annoyed when I missed one in December. I'll translate my Hasepfeffer recipe for you later. I'm always amazed at how the hare isn't prized as a game species or on the table in the UK. In France and Italy, hunters are crazy for it!

 

[Buchan]

Delicious as a ragu with pasta (recently had it in Italy). Locally the dish is so popular that it's name roughly translates as "Hare today, gone tomorrow"

 

[TOMMO.B]

You can not beat Jugged hare. A long slow cooking process. with onions and cloves, and orange.
We still have a good few hares here. so i have hare often

 

[User00035]

Any actual recipes? I tried cooking hare a few times and its always livery and tough. Obviously doing it wrong. Haven't been permitted to shoot hares on my main ground for years but now the population is high and the owners want them controlled so it would be a shame to waste the meat.

I'd like to know how to cook the saddle/loin meat. Slow cooking the legs to make them tender and turning it into a ragu makes sense but I've seen chefs on TV cooking the loin whole and keeping it tender and I've never managed to do that.

 

[Ben1987]

I've made all sorts with it. I was irritated with the last one I made because I made a salami with it and it didn't work! Pies are good. The trick I find with game is to incorporate it into 'normal' meals and then the kids will eat it. I've got a 10yr old step daughter that will not eat anything green, red or different and she loves plain pasta! Freak child. I fed her what she believed was chicken and bacon pie a few weeks ago. Best pie she'd ever eaten, even went back for seconds! I then told her it was rabbit and she said why hadn't I ever let her try rabbit before!!!
Google hare recipes and all sorts will come up but don't be afraid to use it as Norma meat. If you've got an abundant supply you could make enough mince to make lasagne or bolognaise.

 

[tikka_madras]

I tend to do it in two meals - first night roast the saddle and serve with veg for a simple quick meal for 2. You don't have to do this, but long slow cooking of the saddle tends to make it a bit dry and not that pleasant so I think "why waste it cooking it badly?".

Main event, make a stock with plenty of stock veg (think onion, carrot, leek, celery, bay leaf, bouquet garni, peppercorns etc). Strain and discard the veg.

Another load of stock veg, soften in a bit of oil.

Put stock in pan. Stick legs in. Red wine and/or port. Spice if you want (allspice, mace, cloves). Cook very low (barely simmering) for two or three hours until meat is tender. Take out meat. Reduce remaining stock to about half. Pour in the blood of the hare (if you add a small splash of red wine vinegar when you collect it, it shouldn't clot), cook for a few minutes, it should turn into a thick, glossy brown sauce if you reduced the stock enough. Strip the meat from the bones with your fingers and add back to the sauce. Serve with mash and anything else you fancy.

I used to do that, or a variation of it, once a year. Haven't shot a hare for a couple of years though and haven't made any effort to get one.

 

[tikka_madras]

I leave the loin on the bone, brown it in oil on the stove then put the pan in a hot oven for a few minutes. Carve and serve. Not fancy, but works for me

 

[User00035]

Sounds good. Cheers TM. Sounds like i'm over-cooking it.

 

[Tom270]

Hare is lovely, I usually make stew and add some steak and kidney and loads of vegetables season well and cook in one pot, some times I thicken the lot and use it as pie filling. I wrote it up on here once think it was called Pie the full story. I took one to work once and it all went very fast indeed. Even folk not keen on shooting downed it like there was no tomorrow.

 

[enfieldspares]

In Australia they're considered a pest and all I've ever really done with them after the dogs have caught them or after I've shot them is to feed them back to the dogs.

Sinner!

I've always eaten them jointed into five pieces, leave the bones in don't fillet, dust in seasoned with salt and pepper flour, and thrown in a ceramic casserole with the heart put on a lid and put in the oven with carrots (and if you like flour dumplings) and served with boiled savoy cabbage, mashed potatoes and redcurrant jelly.

There's nothing simpler and it's really delicious. But SLOW cooking on a LOW heat but so that's it cooked through. Lift out with a spoon with holes and serve with the vegetables. So none of the cooking liquid on the plate with it. Save that for a good soup the next day.

I'd reckon that you could today use a modern ceramic slow cooker that plugs int to the wall if you din't want to cook in the oven. But the "secret" is to use a ceramic, potter, clay or whatever glazed on the inside pot. Lie you might use for a Lancashire Hot Pot and allow plenty of free space...so don't pack the stuff in tight...maybe a size bigger that you'd think.

Another tip if you hang them is hang them upside down with a small plastic bag over the head held on with string or a loose rubber band to catch the blood and add that to the pot to cook.

I think that hare would be a good meat to try cooking sous-vide as, as said, it is best cooked on low heat for a long time. Cooked through but not boiled to death.

 

[basil]

www.1245.forumotion.net

 

[Pine Marten]

As promised this morning, here’s the recipe for Hasepfeffer, a traditional dish from my region of Alsace. I must warn you, you will use up ALL your kitchenware and ALL your horizontal surfaces making this, so plan accordingly. It is absolutely wonderful though. And importantly, if you can, make sure you have the hare’s blood and liver (with the bile sack removed).

2016-01-04_11-35-54 by pinemarten, on Flickr

Ingredients:

• 1 hare
• 2 large onions
• Some small/baby onions
• Oil of some description (I use olive, because I have it)
• 50cl Cognac
• Thyme and bay leaves
• Crushed garlic
• Cloves
• About two bottles of red wine, not too robust
• Butter
• A bit of flour
• About 200g diced bacon
• Mushrooms (Can’t have two many as far as I’m concerned, but as you like)

First of all, you need to marinate the hare overnight. Cut the hare into six pieces (legs, saddle and the front end of the thorax, rib cage) and put the pieces in a large terracotta dish. Pour on some oil, the cognac, add the crushed garlic, salt, pepper, herbs, one of the onions sliced, mix it all up and cover in the wine. Cover it and leave it until the next day.

The next day, remove the pieces of hare from the marinade and lay them out to dry. Then brown the diced bacon in one of those enamelled cast-iron pots (e.g. Le Creusot) in the butter until they’re browned and a lot of the fat has rendered, then remove the bacon. In the bacon fat, brown the hare in batches with the other sliced onion. When they’re all browned, sprinkle some flour on them and brown that. Then cover with the liquid from the marinade after filtering it through a fine colander, add a bouquet garni, put the lid on and leave to simmer on a low heat for an hour and a half.

While that’s going on, brown the small onions in another pan (I’m on six or seven different cooking vessels now if you work it out, we’re running out of space). Then add the mushrooms and fry them in the same pan, then set aside.

After an hour and a half, remove the pieces of hare from the pot and put them in another dish (8!) in a low oven to keep warm. Add the onions, mushrooms, and fried diced bacon (yes, you have some, look two paragraphs above, it's in a bowl or on a plate on one of your packed surfaces, maybe behind the remaining marinade).

Now attend to your sauce: back to the pot that you removed the meat from. Chop up the liver finely and mix it with the blood in a bowl (9!). Taste the sauce and season/reduce if needed, and add the blood mix, which will thicken the sauce. If it’s still not quite thick enough, try whisking in some cornflour, or just plain flour, but corn works best for this bit.

When ready, place the hare, onions, bacon and mushrooms on a warm serving dish (10!), pour the sauce over it, and serve with pasta of some kind, ideally Spaetzle but you don’t have to go full Alsatian. This needs quite a powerful red wine to go with it.

Oh, and by now your kitchen is a total mess.

 

[JockStalk]

Pine Marten - that sounds truly delicious.

But delicious as it may be, that's the kind of dish I'd prefer to drive to Alsace to have (in a restaurant).

On the home front that's a mountain of washing up, and amongst other things half a litre of cognac and two bottles of wine. And a full Alsatian.

It kind of puts me in mind of those American recipes that start with 'take six lobsters....'

This may well be philistine, but I'd probably give little Hartley a quick roast and save the booze for me........

 

[Pine Marten]

Pine Marten - delicious as it may be, that's the kind of dish I'd willingly drive to Alsace to have (in a restaurant).

I'd say that was a very sensible idea.

On the home front that's a mountain of washing up, and amongst other things half a litre of cognac and two bottles of wine. And a full Alsatian.

Yes. This is famously the only dish my grandfather ever cooked. He did it once a year, trashed the kitchen, and didn't clean up. Obviously everyone congratulated him, except my grandmother who had to deal with the aftermath. I don't make it often because I never have any hare. Backup gave me one last year which is the last time I made it. There would have been another one this Christmas if I hadn't missed that one ten metres away at Unicorn71's place!

This may be philistine, but I'd probably give little Hartley a quick roast and save the booze for me........

Nothing wrong with that!

 

[bruce w]

Slow cook casserole, add vegetables, potatoes, onions, carrots mainly any root vegetable you have, meat stock,rosemary, thyme sage or a good old fashioned bouquet garnet, cook in oven or slow cooker, red wine or port can be added part way through, I usually remove bones when cooked, before serving with suet dumplings. Mrs Bruce W!!!