Whole Wild Rabbit – Lean, Versatile and Full of Flavour
Wild rabbit is a lean, protein-rich game meat that’s both versatile and full of flavour. Shot throughout the year, it has long been valued in traditional British kitchens, though today it is often underused and overlooked. We rate it highly, as do many chefs in our restaurant community, for its firm, delicately flavoured white meat and ability to shine across a wide range of dishes.

Once a home-kitchen staple, rabbit lends itself beautifully to slow cooking, roasting, or barbecuing. Perfect cooked on the bone into a rich ragù for pappardelle, wild rabbit also roasts and grills exceptionally well, developing a depth of flavour that rivals more familiar meats.

With wild game on our doorstep, we work with small farms and smallholdings across the Yorkshire Dales to source rabbit responsibly, ensuring quality, sustainability, and respect for the land.

Chef Valentine Warner on Wild Rabbit
"Legs dangling from the poacher’s long-coat pocket or in the hands of some tired-looking kitchen servant, scullery preparations underway, and I think the rabbit, above all other game, is the icon of the British country kitchen. Where I grew up in the West Country they are often still referred to as coneys, and it is virtually impossible to find a country cookbook of yore without a rabbit recipe burrowed amongst its pages.

Understood to have arrived with the Romans from Spain, one theory suggests that Hispania, crudely interpreted here, translates as Land of Rabbits.

My surname ‘Warner’, no less, is thought to stem from warrener or rabbit keeper and so it seems that for generations I’ve been bound to the rabbit. For your information, I can draw a good one on paper in under 5 seconds.

Once prized for high table, the rabbit would have been reared in a banked-up earth arrangement of pottery pipework, imitating their more natural homes in sandier soils. By the way, baby rabbits so often referred to as ‘bunnies’ are in fact more correctly called ‘kittens’."

Hunting
"Try to buy rabbits that have been rifle or air rifle shot, and ideally head shot. This minimises the meat damage so often caused by shotguns."

Meat
"Wild rabbit meat looks totally different from farmed rabbit. It will likely be headless (the latter always sold with pink-eyed head left on and inner pluck included). The meat itself will be a darker lilac in colour, unlike the pale chicken coloured meat of the farmed. Wild rabbit meat contains virtually no fat at all, unlike its cultivated cousin."

Cooking
"While rabbits may be seen outside in greater numbers in the warm months, at this time they will be doing what rabbits do best. Such amorous activities mean that adult rabbits can be somewhat ‘funky’ and are best avoided. I find it best to eat wild rabbit over the cold months.

Whenever possible, younger smaller rabbits are the best to eat, the larger ones being a little grassy in taste and tougher. Without getting into the intricacies of size and subsequent cooking applications, rabbit suits strong flavours well such as wine, olives, anchovies, spices and lemons.

When cooking rabbit, adding fat is important (unless cooking the loins in a quick dish). Secondly is the importance of pressure. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, a heavy cast iron pot or Dutch oven can work wonders in its place.

Minced, the meat is fairly easy to cook; portioned and jointed it responds well to gentle braising and cast iron cookware."