Wild rabbit slow cooked* with rosemary, olive oil and garlic

With a bunch of mates coming round for dinner and a lot of rabbit in the freezer from a recent foray with the airgun, we wanted to cook up a hearty meal that wouldn’t be over-complicated. As with most people, time wasn’t in abundance so we needed a recipe that was relatively quick but produced a dish that suggested we’d slaved over a hot oven. We decided to give this recipe a bash and found it so easy to follow. Happily, the results tasted outstanding.

A word of warning, though: with the garlic this is utterly delicious… but make sure you don’t have a date the next day!

Ingredients

• 4 wild rabbits, jointed into legs, shoulders and half saddles (ask your butcher to do this for you)
• 100g plain flour, seasoned
• 500ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 10 rosemary sprigs
• 40 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 600ml dry white white

Method

1. Toss the rabbit pieces in the flour, tap off the excess and brown the pieces, five or six at a time, in a few tablespoons of the oil. It’s important to use a really big casserole dish — one that will go on the stove and hold all the meat.
2. When the pieces are golden brown, fit them all back in the pan, throw in the rosemary, garlic and all of the olive oil (seriously!). Add the wine and mix well.
3. Bring the mixture up to the boil, then partially cover with a lid and allow to simmer vigorously for 2 to 2½ hours. After this time, the sauce should be thickened and the rabbit should comeaway from the bones really easily. (Don’t try to slow cook* this in the oven as it just won’t bring the elements of the sauce together in the same way.)
4. Season and serve the whole lot with sautéed potatoes or creamy mash and buttered greens.

Jamie Chandler and William Jones run Hampshire Sporting Shooter and love to cook local game

Jamie Chandler and William Jones are keen shooters, who run Hampshire Sporting Shooter, a website that focuses on UK fieldsports news, reviews and recipes. They love to cook local game. Working with chef Alan Haughie from The Savoy, now owner of catering firm McCrimmon & Reid, they create game recipes you can follow in your own kitchen.