WTWD - Missouri - Smothered Rabbit and Onion

Skipping ahead just a little bit because at the Farmer's Market Saturday Groff's Content had some fresh rabbit, and I couldn't resist (best wishes to Julie from the farm, who broke her knee at the market last week, for a complete and speedy recovery). Checked, and sure enough the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery "American Cookery" section has a couple of rabbit recipes, the "nearest" one to Maryland being this one, attributed to Missouri.

Smothered Rabbit and Onions

(to serve 2 - 4)

1 cleaned rabbit

salt and paprika to taste

flour for dredging

3 T butter

1 lg onion, sliced

1 c sour cream

(milk or buttermilk)

Clean a rabbit and cut into small pieces. Pictures show before and after being sectioned. I cut the meat off the rib cage (upper left in the right-hand picture) and froze the rib cage for future use in stock.

Season the rabbit with salt and paprika to taste. Dredge in flour. Melt butter in large skillet. Saute the rabbit until it is browned on both sides. Picture shows the browned rabbit.

Reduce heat. Cover rabbit thickly with sliced onion. Sprinkle onion with salt. Pour in 1 cup dairy sour cream (see note below). Picture shows it with the sour cream poured over.

Cover skillet and simmer 1 hour. Or, put in a preheated oven at 325F and bake until tender. First post picture shows it after simmering.

Cooking Notes: I followed this recipe almost exactly, making only two changes. First, I had a small bunch of carrots that was just starting to go soft, so I cut them up and added them beneath the onions after the rabbit had browned. Second, the sour cream I had was too thick to pour even after having been stirred, so I thinned it a bit with buttermilk (milk would have worked, too). As the picture of it just poured over the onions shows, it still was quite thick. But I was able to put it on as a very thick fluid, rather than as a bunch of glops. Also, I wanted to use a gluten-free flour and settled on garbanzo bean (chick pea) flour. It browned up well.

Eating Notes: Once again, the Woman's Day propensity for minimal spicing in this section of the Encyclopedia was, if anything, beneficial. The rabbit was moist and both meat and vegetables were perfectly cooked. The sour cream formed an almost cheesy top layer, with the moist onions underneath. The flavors were all mild but distinctive, and you could tell you were eating rabbit and not poultry.

The plating is not the most elegant in the world, and we did end up eating with our fingers, but that's only because we didn't want to let any escape us. If I were making rabbit for company I would have been more fussy about picking out the small bones when I cut the back into sections, but otherwise it was perfect and a real treat.