Canadian Rabbit Stew Recipe

Boil the rabbit in the water until its meat is tender, then remove it from the pot and bone it. Put the meat into a large kettle, add 2 cups of the broth in which the rabbit was cooked, bring to a boil, and add a thickening sauce that you’ve made by stirring the cornstarch into 1/4 cup of the remaining rabbit broth. Allow the kettle’s contents to boil for another minute, then reduce the heat. Add all the remaining ingredients.

“Now for the piece de resistance, the topping that makes this stew stand head and shoulders above the rest!” says George Fournier.

1 cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chilled shortening
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (the less you use, the better the dumplings seem to hold together)

Sift the dry ingredients together into a bowl, then cut in the shortening with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the milk all at once, stir lightly just until the dough holds together, and then drop rounded tablespoonfuls of the mixture on top of the gently bubbling stew. With the heat adjusted so that the liquid just simmers, let the dumplings cook — uncovered — for 10 minutes, then cover and let them cook 10 minutes longer, or until the steam has fluffed them up nicely.

If you need to thicken the stew, do so after removing the dumplings. And George recommends serving homemade tomato relish and cranberry sauce on the side, to give your hearty meal just the proper finishing touch.

Read more about how to cook rabbit: Cooking Rabbit: Four Rabbit Recipes.