Rabbit In Creamy Mustard Sauce | Classic French Recipes

Hello everyone, Stéphane here. I'm back in my kitchen. I'm kind of glad to be able now to cook again some more recipes, like revitalize. So before I start, I'd like to say thank you to all the new subscribers. 20,000 people have joined the channel while I was away. It's been absolutely amazing, so thank you very much. I know it's autumn in America, and it's the perfect time to start making some game recipes. The recipe of the day is a rabbit in mustard sauce, the most classic French lapin à la moutarde. It's a simple dish made of pieces of rabbit that we're going to be cooking in a creamy velouté with an addition of mustard, mushrooms, and glazed onion. Very simple to make with that step-by-step recipe, but equally delicious. Now let's cook. So making a recipe is nice, but it's also important to understand the flavors you're trying to get in your dish. So as you can see here, it's going to be separated in two parts. On one hand, you have the rabbit meat. I don't have details. I've detailed my rabbit, making sure there's no little bones or anything. My complementary garnish is going to be the mushrooms, pickling onions, of course, the mustard, and cream. So that's one important part. But the base of the flavor is this, is the stock I'm going to be making, which is going to be a rabbit stock. So I'm using some chicken bones, some rabbit bones, and of course, the celery, carrots, leeks, bouquet garni, onions, and cloves, the traditional thing you use for a white stock. Now all of the ingredients, of course, are listed in the video description for the full recipe. So we're first going to start by making a white stock because we've been away for some time, and we're just going to do a small recap. So today we're making a rabbit white stock, and I'm going to start by just taking my bones that I've rinsed. You can blanch them if you want. And I'm going to put this without any seasoning in my pan over here. So plenty of bones equals plenty of flavor. And when this is done, I'm just going to pour some water, so a little bit of water, halfway. And I'm also using an off-the-shelf chicken stock because that's going to help me to really, really get these flavors going in a minimum amount of time. And I will do a video on the explanation of why I'm always using off-the-shelf stock to make stock. So now we're going to wait for this mix to come to the boil. Okay, so as you can see, it boils. And immediately when you go to boil, you're going to add some of the celery. I'm not using everything from the recipe listed ingredients because I'm doing a smaller portion. But you get the idea. Celery, carrots, one bukegane. I'm trying to place somewhere there. Make some space for it so it can infuse. This is leeks, the white part of the leeks again. So we're doing a white stock, so we try to keep that white theme, to not bring any brownish stuff. And maybe one onion here would be enough to give us some flavors. Okay, very simple. Once you've done that, it's just a matter of covering your stock and let it on a very slow simmer for 45 minutes. Alright, so now that our stock is simmering gently, we have time to peel our pearl onion. That we're going to glaze later on. And we have time also to cook our mushrooms. So today we're going to do again a recap on the white cooking of mushrooms. So you take a pan. Mushrooms that have trimmed nicely. Pour your mushrooms in. It's very simple. Some water. That's about, you know, less than half a liter. The important is that, you know, your mushrooms are barely covered in water. Okay. A piece of butter. And we're going to add some lemon. Half a lemon. And this preparation basically is going to cook your mushroom. And because of the lemon, it's going to keep the white color. Again, for that white theme dish that we have. So everything kind of remains white. So you put your heat on medium high. And you bring this to a boil. And when it brings to the boil, let it cook gently for about 10 minutes. After a few minutes, your mushrooms are cooked. And this is what you get. You can turn your heat off. Leave them in the juice. And we're going to put them on the side for later use. And now, while this is done, we're going to do our onions. So glazing onion, we're going to do a white glazed onion. They're not going to be caramelized. So take the pan medium heat. And I'm going to take my onions. So the pearl onions. At the bottom of the pan. All right. A little bit of water. Just again to cover. So just above. Nothing more. And a little bit of sugar. Not too much. And finally, butter. A piece of butter in there. You make one of those. I've got a video on this. I'll put the link in the video. It should appear now. And you put it on top as best as you can. I'm not an expert on that. But roughly, you get the idea. And you're going to leave this on a, you know, let it boil gently until all the water disappears. And the onions are nicely glazed. My stock is now cooked. So I'm going to discard the bones. All of the big pieces. And I'm going to be filtering my stock. And pass it through a sieve like we had before. Something like that. And then put my stock back into the pan when it's done. Now we're ready to start cooking the meat. Now, one word of warning. When you start cooking your meat, you need to have everything at hand. You're going to need some flour here. About 20 grams. About one onion, thinly sliced. You need your meat, your mustard, your stock that's simmering here. Everything so you don't have to run the kitchen. You start on a medium to low heat. And you're just going to start by slightly coloring your rabbit. So you place your pieces in your pan. I usually put the big pieces first. Of course, it makes sense. Because the small ones are going to cook faster. And I let this one start. And I'll do this one a bit later on. Note that I have not turned them around and let them brown nicely. When I turn my pieces, as you can see, they are slightly colored. And I just turn them around. And put this one in. Because they cook much faster. Just to brown them a little bit. Perfect. When this is like that, it's nicely brown on either side. They are pre-cooked. They are not cooked. You're going to reserve them on a tray like that. And we're going to continue or start to make our sauce. For the sauce, you're going to take your pan. And we're going to use all this taste that we have of the rabbit. Add some onion. Again, this has to be done on a rather low heat. You don't want to burn anything. And we're just going to make this onion sweat. Which is the action of rendering or removing the water content that sits in the onion. It's going to evaporate. It goes into the pan and detaches the juices. But five minutes later, this is what you get. And now we're going to add some flour on top. But not too much. Just a sprinkle. But maybe a tablespoon worth of flour. You can always add some later. And you're going to mix that flour with the fat and the onions. And that is going to create basically a white onion roux. Once all the flour is in, you're going to cook your roux for just a few minutes. And make sure you stir to make sure it doesn't burn. And you should get that little bit like a paste of onion. From there, you're just going to start adding your stock. Yeah. A little bit first. And that's just to detach all of the juices at the bottom. And then I'm going to grab this one. Sorry. And you're going to add, this is roughly a liter, I think, of stock. And this is technically making a velouté. So you're going to wait until this kind of comes back to the boil slowly. And it starts to thicken. When it reaches boil, you will see that your sauce starts to thicken a little bit. Not too much. You see? You've got that liaison that's made. Sauce liée. And you're going to leave it to boil gently and reduce by maybe a quarter. As a side note, my onions are done. The water is gone. They're still white. And I'm going to stop them there. No more cooking. When your sauce has reduced, and as you can see, it thickens again. It's nice and thick now. It's time to taste it. You always want to taste your preparation. Very concentrated. And now it's the time to add some cream. You can add about two good tablespoons of cream in your rabbit velouté. So dissolve your cream. And again, same process. You're going to reduce by a quarter. Okay. Now we're ready to put our rabbit in the sauce and start properly cooking it. And the reason I'm doing this is because I want to braise the rabbit and make sure it's not going to dry off because it's a meat that tends to dry off very, very easily. So I'm going to put everything in here. Put the heat on very, very low and let it simmer on a gentle heat for like 40, maybe 45 minutes or until it's cooked. That depends on your rabbit. All right. So 45 minutes later, you've got your meat that is really nicely reduced. It is cooked, and it is time to just finish the sauce with, finally, the mustard. As you may think, you think there is mustard in there, but actually there is not yet. So very quickly what you have to do is reserve your pieces of meat or your pieces of rabbit. Once your meat is out, you're going to add just about a pinch, maybe half a tablespoon of fresh tarragon and a good amount of mustard. I put like, this is surely about, it should be about two tablespoons of mustard. So you see this? And this is going to give us that real nice color. Now, there's a bit of an aesthetic game when you make this sauce because this is the grand finale. So what you can do, if you want, is to add the rest of your cream to make it a little bit lighter. And that's a personal choice. I like to have something that's mustardy but not too brown. So I like to clear it up with a bit of cream. Finally, you can put back your meat in your sauce and it's ready to serve. And now, for the serving of the dish, so I try to take a little plate. I would serve this with a little tagliatelle, like this. And you would basically just put a piece of meat, maybe a piece of the more tender here. And because I like rabbit, I'm going to put a little piece here. Okay. Let's not forget that we've had some white cooked mushrooms that we're going to place with a little bit of the cooking juice from the mushrooms. So that gives you that light kind of lemony. Okay. Some of the onions, which are the white glazed onions. They're very good. And to finish, you're just going to grab some of that sauce and try to cover your rabbit. There you have it. Okay. And you just finish with, I'm terrible at presenting, but a little piece of parsley and you're done. This is a rabbit in mustard sauce. That's it guys. I hope you enjoyed the video. We're getting back in. I know it's a bit of a long-winded video, but I'm aiming to make more and more videos. So stay tuned for our next recipes. And maybe we're going to look at soups for this autumn coming. Bye-bye and see you all.