I know it's not venison but thought I'd share this as I've seen some rabbit recipes doing the rounds and this is my current fave use of the things. If you're familiar with the salty, fatty French delicacy of pork rillettes you kind of know what to expect. Anyway, very simple and roughly as follows…
Preheat oven to 150c.
I made a big batch the other day because I had two sizeable rabbits, but you can scale the recipe using a rabbit to pork ratio of two to one. I broke the rabbits down into joints (weighed just over a kilo together) and arranged them in a large cast-iron casserole. To this I added 500g of rindless, fatty pork belly cut into decent sized cubes, and buried among the meat a bouquet garni of three bay leaves, four cloves, some peppercorns and a good few sprigs of thyme. Now...melt enough rendered pork fat / lard to cover the lot!
Pop in your preheated oven for around three hours or until everything is very tender. Take it out every now and then to ensure nothing is out of the fat and drying out. It's done when you can pull it apart with minimal resistance.
When you're satisfied, take it out and leave it to cool to handling temperature. Once there, discard the herbs etc and break up the meat fibres (this takes no effort) and crush up the pork, fat and all. Mix this all together vigorously adding generous quantities of salt and black pepper (you need more than you think - keep tasting), and enough of the liquid fat to create a creamy consistency. When you're happy, pack into whatever you're keeping it in and pour over a cap of fat from the cooking pan. Store in the fridge. No idea how long it'll last, but longer if the fat seal isn't broken and you sterilise your containers!
Serve on good bread or hot toast, preferably with cornichons. Yum. Let me know if you try it!
(I will post pics if I work out how…)
Preheat oven to 150c.
I made a big batch the other day because I had two sizeable rabbits, but you can scale the recipe using a rabbit to pork ratio of two to one. I broke the rabbits down into joints (weighed just over a kilo together) and arranged them in a large cast-iron casserole. To this I added 500g of rindless, fatty pork belly cut into decent sized cubes, and buried among the meat a bouquet garni of three bay leaves, four cloves, some peppercorns and a good few sprigs of thyme. Now...melt enough rendered pork fat / lard to cover the lot!
Pop in your preheated oven for around three hours or until everything is very tender. Take it out every now and then to ensure nothing is out of the fat and drying out. It's done when you can pull it apart with minimal resistance.
When you're satisfied, take it out and leave it to cool to handling temperature. Once there, discard the herbs etc and break up the meat fibres (this takes no effort) and crush up the pork, fat and all. Mix this all together vigorously adding generous quantities of salt and black pepper (you need more than you think - keep tasting), and enough of the liquid fat to create a creamy consistency. When you're happy, pack into whatever you're keeping it in and pour over a cap of fat from the cooking pan. Store in the fridge. No idea how long it'll last, but longer if the fat seal isn't broken and you sterilise your containers!
Serve on good bread or hot toast, preferably with cornichons. Yum. Let me know if you try it!
(I will post pics if I work out how…)
