Instant Pot Rabbit Stew

I haven’t shared a recipe in awhile, and while this was super easy – it was so good that we have no leftovers despite filling the 6-quart Instant Pot to the brim.

Rabbit isn’t something we eat very often, sadly. I’ve avoided most wild game since my childhood, but my dad convinced me to try rabbit again last year and it was fantastic.  Granted, these weren’t actually wild rabbits, but home raised with a controlled diet, but they didn’t have that sharp wild taste at all.

A guy at That Man’s work gave him a rabbit, but only 1 to feed 5 people, all which love rabbit, was a challenge. I’m pretty sure Middle could have eaten the whole rabbit by herself if we’d grilled it!

Rabbit Stew stretched out the rabbit to feed all of us. Middle ended up having 3 bowls, and Littlest ate the last of the “leftovers” That Man was going to take for his lunch tomorrow.

Ingredients

• rabbit, cleaned, 3-4 lbs. Whole or cut up (doesn’t matter)
• 6-8 cups water
• salt, pepper, basil, rosemary to taste
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/4 c. flour
• 3-4 carrots, large sliced (they’ll cook to mush in the Instant Pot if you’re not careful)
• 3-4 potatoes, peeled, large sliced
• baby portabello mushrooms, large sliced (I used 3 huge ones from Sam’s Club)
• 2-3 stalks celery, sliced fine
• 1/2 onion, diced
• homemade noodles (optional, but crucial for my family. I had some set aside from Thanksgiving in the freezer)

Instructions

• The cleaned rabbit was already in a large Ziplock bag.  I added flour, salt, and pepper directly to the bag and shook it up to coat.
• Preheat the Instant Pot on the saute setting.  Add 2 T olive oil and brown both sides of the meat.  It’s okay to use the whole rabbit intact as long as it’ll fit.
• Once browned, I added water to almost cover the rabbit since I wanted broth for stew. Add herbs of your choice but rosemary was nice.
• I used the Instant Pot’s built-in meat setting (35 mins) and released the steam manually at the end of the cycle.
• Add the veggies and set the Instant Pot for manual 10 more minutes.
• My Instant Pot was filled to the brim, so I let the steam release naturally for a good 15 minutes before I turned the valve to reduce splatter.
• By now, the rabbit was literally fall-apart tender. I removed the meat and bones with a slotted spoon and let it cool a few minutes until I could pull out the meat and return to the pot.  I don’t like a lot of skin or dark meat, so I saved out all the icky stuff for That Man to eat.
• Add the homemade noodles if you have them. I cranked the Instant Pot back to saute so it’d boil the soup and cook the noodles for about 10 minutes.  The homemade noodles were coated in flour to prevent sticking in the freezer, which gave a nice thickness to the broth.
• Taste and add more salt if needed.

By the time I added all the veggies, I’d filled the pot to the max fill line. And we still ate it all.  The broth was rich and thick, beautifully seasoned.  Some parts of the rabbit were a bit stringy but overall it was delicious and easy to make.