Hare Balls

This is the recipe for the rabbit sausage meatballs we made for the wine tasting on Thursday night. They went over really well, even a few of the folks who were leery of trying rabbit thought they were wonderful. We loved them, but hey, we are prejudiced! And to think that they even went well with a red wine.


Hare Balls
(Rare Hare Barn rabbit sausage meatballs)

400 degree oven

1 1/2 lbs rabbit sausage from The Rare Hare Barn
1 Cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs, lightly beaten (ours were farm fresh--there IS a difference!)
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
3/4 cup grated Parmesan Reggiano (we used a blend of Parmesan, Romano and Asiago)
(The recipe called for salt and pepper, but as the sausage is already perfectly seasoned, we left that out.)

Combine all ingredients in large bowl and mix with very clean hands. Try not to compress it too much, keep it light and fluffy.

Shape the meatballs by hand, we made small balls, about 1".

Place on baking sheet, about 1" apart.

The test batch of 12 baked in about 8 1/2 minutes, the larger batch of 70 took about 11 minutes. Test for doneness by cutting with a knife; they will mush rather than cut if not done. Being a white meat, they will look a bit paler when cooked than you might expect.

We took marinara sauce for the tasting, but I completely forgot about it, and no one seemed to miss it anyway. In retrospect I think that was actually a good thing, the sauce was pretty heavy and would have overwhelmed the taste.

For the dinner at Hudson Gardens in August, I'm going to try making one of the sauces that our friends at The Omnivores Solution developed for the brats. That should be much nicer than good ol' store bought marinara.