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I tasted my first rabbit hot pot recipe at a Moroccan restaurant in Los Angeles when I was 19 and on a cross country trip with my brother helping him with a West to East Coast move.
Moroccan restaurants are a real cultural experience because you sit on the floor on cushions and eat with your hands. The rabbit hot pot was delicious but for some unknown reason, I’ve not eaten it since.
Moroccan Hot Pot
It’s not surprising then that this rabbit recipe for Moroccan Hot Pot in Arabella Forge’s fantastic book Frugavore caught my eye. In Australia, where Arabella lives, rabbits are considered a nuisance – a non-native species that damages the natural environment and represent a major threat to flora and fauna alike.
Killing rabbits in Australia is considered a public service, and Arabella writes in Frugavore that “you can often spot young kids selling rabbits for next to nothing by the side of the road in rural areas.”
I recently noticed that my local butcher carries rabbit, so I really must learn to cook it using Arabella’s excellent rabbit hot pot recipe. If any of you are experts at cooking rabbit, please share your thoughts and tips in the comments section!
To check out another recipe from Frugavore (you really need to check out this book!), this recipe for sweet potato hummus is amazing!
By the way, this recipe is best using rabbit bone broth, but if you don’t have it on hand, any type of traditionally made bone broth will do.
Moroccan Rabbit Hot Pot Recipe
Delicious Moroccan recipe for rabbit hot pot that will have your family wanting to eat this nutritious, frugal meat more often.
Ingredients
- 2 rabbits
- 3/4 Tbl extra virgin olive oil
- 8 tomatoes large, ripe
- 1 lemon rind small lemon, rind cut into strips
- 1/2 cup sherry or white wine
- 2 cups homemade stock
- 3-4 thyme sprigs
- 1 red onion finely sliced
- 1 bunch fresh coriander or parsley finely chopped
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 1 tsp sea salt
Instructions
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Ask your butcher to cut the rabbit into joints at the shoulder and hip.
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Combine the peppercorns, garlic, salt, cinnamon, ginger and olive oil.
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Rub the mixture over the meat, cover and refrigerate for 6-24 hours.
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Preheat the oven to 350F/177C.
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In a frying pan over medium heat, fry the rabbit for a minute or so on each side until it seals. Put the meat, tomatoes, lemon rind, sherry, stock, thyme, and onion in a heavy pot with a tight fitting lid. Ideally, the ingredients should take up 3/4 of the space in the pot. Check that there is enough liquid to just cover the meat. Put the hot pot in the oven and cook for 30 minutes or until the meat is soft.
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Do not overcook hot pot as rabbit becomes dry and leathery if cooked too long.
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Remove the hot pot from the oven and season the stew to taste. To thicken the sauce, remove the meat from the pot and simmer the pot on the stovetop uncovered for 5-10 minutes. Finely chop the coriander or parsley and stir into the sauce. Serve each piece of meat with a generous helping of sauce. *
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Refrigerate any hot pot leftovers.
Recipe Notes
2 cans diced tomatoes can be substituted for the fresh tomatoes.
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This is amazing, it was so delicious; thank you for sharing. I am considering adding curry and peanut butter on a simmer and spices you included. Hopefully its good enough that I come back with feedback or great enough I totally forget I have somewhere else to be (temp of course)
Can i cook the rabbit in the oven at low heat (275) forv5 hours or would it be too dry?
This sounds like an excellent recipe to use with rabbit. Not much different then what I would normally make. Rabbit meat does indeed have a subtle, sweet flavor to it. I wouldn’t hesitate to lower the heat and lengthen the cooking time in the oven but really don’t see a need to. One of our favorite, and common meals is to cut a fryer rabbit up, season with salt and pepper, brown lightly in the cast iron skillet using either home rendered lard or cold pressed & filtered local sunflower oil. At that point we add water – although some may want to add chicken stock, but chicken stock does alter the flavor of rabbit. We then cover and bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Rabbit prepared this way is easy to pair up with just about any side dish a person might want. This is our daughters favorite meal – and has been since we made it for her as her first meat meal in her life. Also do not hesitate to make broth using rabbit either – it’s excellent.
I second the request for information on the local butcher!
I grew up eating Greek food, and we had to eat all the things kids normally hate: all sorts of liver, chicken hearts and stomachs, tripe soup, an amazing Easter appetizer that my dad used to make out of lamb’s intestines wrapped around liver/heart/spleen/etc., and a meat stew (usually rabbit) with onions, called Stifado. I used to absolutely hate Stifado because it was so sweet (I also had nightmares of my mom killing cute, innocent bunnies). In hindsight, I’m pretty sure it was the onions that made it so sweet. I would definitely try rabbit again, and this hot pot sounds fab. I really like the idea of all these spices with the flavor of the rabbit. I wonder if I can actually get my kid and hubby on board, though.
I would think this would work equally well for chicken or little hens, right?
Here in CA we don’t exactly find rabbit easily, although I get it from an Amish coop we have or online…Anyway, cooking slow is the way to go! 🙂
Isn’t rabbit pretty lean? Wouldn’t someone wanting to keep a lot of animal fats in his or her diet want to add fat to a rabbit meal?