Braised Rabbit with Pink Cream Sauce

Shopping List

1 Whole Rabbit
2 cups of chopped heirloom carrots
1 white or yellow onion, chopped
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 cup of bone broth
½ cup of white wine
1 ½ cups of sour cream
4 cloves of crushed white or black garlic
2 tablespoons of dried italian herbs
2 tablespoons of salted butter
Juice squeezed from one lemon

The Short Story

Start by carving the rabbit into four pieces - the two back legs, the torso and midsection.
Take a large metal bowl and add the vinegar, lemon juice and broth and lightly mix to combine.
Season rabbit with salt and pepper and place it in a large metal bowl and gently stir so the meat is coated in the liquid. Place bowl in fridge for 2 - 10 hours to marinade.
Remove the bowl from the fridge an HOUR before cooking. You can leave the rabbit in the marinade. Preheat your oven to 375°F.
Using a dutch oven (or other oven-safe pot), add olive oil and heat over medium heat, add garlic, onions, a few dashes of salt and a several cranks of cracked pepper. Sauté for 5 minutes.
Add chopped heirloom carrots and saute for an additional 5 minutes.
Pour the white wine and sour cream to the dutch oven. This is when the liquid should be turning pink from the purple heirloom carrots. Sprinkle the italian herbs into the sauce while stirring.
Remove rabbit from marinade and add to the dutch oven/pot, ensure that the meat is evenly coated in the pink sauce. Discard marinade from the metal bowl - you no longer need use of it.
Cover the dutch oven with the lid and place it in the oven. Bake for 1 hour, taking it out of the oven after 30 minutes to flip the rabbit so each side gets evenly coated and cooked.
Remove the rabbit from the dutch oven and remove meat from bone. Meat should be tender enough to be pulled off the bone with little to no resistance. Transfer meat to a separate plate and cover to keep warm.
Return dutch oven to the stove top and turn on heat to medium. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, a few cranks of freshly ground black pepper and reduce liquid for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve with a side of mashed potatoes and top with the thicken sour cream sauce on top.

Pics or it didn’t happen

The Long Story

The rabbit: I’ve cooked with rabbits before but not often so it was nice working with this meat again. In all honesty, I will probably only cook rabbit on special holidays like Easter. Rabbit is extremely lean with very little fat however it is expensive and being a small animal, has even smaller bones that can be easily broken. When it comes to taste, it is similar to quail with similar texture and of course, bone fragments. Seriously, I can’t stress enough that I was shocked at the amount of bones I accidentally bit down on while chewing.

Please note that you can easily substitute the rabbit for chicken and this dish will still be fantastic. If however you want to try this dish with rabbit yourself, I recommend you de-bone the rabbit AFTER cooking but before plating. Cooking the rabbit with the bones adds a fantastic flavor but for the safety of yourself and your guest, de-bone the damn animal before plating it.

Wine: You can use a red wine for this dish if you want - I used white because that’s what I was drinking at the time but using a dry red will make the sauce a deeper color of pink so it all depends on your presentation preference.

Broth: After watching the Mandalorian for the 5th time, Mr. Mustang and I are almost exclusively using bone broth in all our dishes. Bone broth is healthier than most other broths but it is about $2 more expensive than others.

Using chicken, vegetable, mushroom or even beef broth is an acceptable substitute instead of bone broth.

Carrots: Now when first making this dish, it was not my intention for the sauce to turn pink but once the sour cream entered the pot, the sauce instantly turned a pale salmon color. If you don’t want your dinner to be pink, use regular carrots or a different vegetable like broccoli, mushrooms, ect. I wanted to use heirlooms because there was a special in the frozen food section and it was the only carrots I had on hand at the time.

Garlic: I give myself one splurge during each grocery trip and this past week I saw a new addition to the shelves - black garlic. I’ve only heard of black garlic from Bob’s Burgers TV show so I shrugged and said why not? At $10 for 4-5 heads of garlic, it’s not a bad deal but the flavor it gives off is very subtle when cooked. When raw, black garlic is as potent as black truffles however when heat is added, the fermented flavors get muddled.

You are more than free to use regular garlic in this recipe as there isn’t much difference in taste when using either version - the only reason I can see when using it is bragging rights to your guests saying “hey, I used black garlic in this” which is like also saying “hey, I used saffron in this”. It’s an expensive ingredient that only the sharpest of pallets will detect.