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Hazenpeper (Dutch Hare Stew)
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Hazenpeper is the dark winter ragout where hare meets wine, juniper, smoked bacon, and ontbijtkoek: a hunting-season dish that proves Dutch spice could be quiet and lavish at once.
Soups & Stews
Dutch
Special Occasion
Make Ahead
Christmas
35 min
Active Time
2 hr 45 min cook•15 hr 40 min total
Yield6 servings
Not every Dutch winter begins at the quay. Some begin inland, in the sandy fields of Gelderland and Brabant, where the hare has been running all night through beet stubble and arrives in the kitchen as the most honest sort of special occasion: a gift that asks you to wait. In my grandmother's second notebook, hazenpeper sits on one of the darker pages, the kind of page that smells of clove even before you read it.
But let me tell you a secret: the pepper in hazenpeper is not a dare. The name already tells you the old kitchen logic. Haas is hare, and in compounds it becomes hazen; peper, in Dutch game cookery, meant a dark, spiced ragout or sauce, sharpened with wine or vinegar and scented with the expensive little cargoes our frugal kitchens learned to use without boasting. Juniper for the heath, clove and bay for the pot, smoked bacon for the Dutch insistence that lean meat needs help. Exuberant cookery in a frugal country, again.
The method is as stern as winter and just as fair. Hare is lean and muscular, an animal made of running, so you marinate it overnight to let wine and spice do their quiet work, dry it well so it browns instead of sulks, and braise it until the meat gives up the bone. Then comes the Dutch trick that looks childish until it works: crumbled ontbijtkoek, spiced breakfast cake, melting into the sauce to thicken it and echo the clove, cinnamon, and rye sweetness already hiding there.
Serve it with potato puree, red cabbage, maybe stoofpeertjes, pears stewed red in wine, and don't apologize for making it the day before. Hazenpeper improves in the cold. I prefer to keep it a bit more relaxed, in the Dutch way: the braadpan, the Dutch oven, straight on the table, a spoon big enough for generosity, and the story told before anyone lifts the lid.
Hazenpeper belongs to the Dutch and Flemish wildpeper family, dark game ragouts associated with hunting season in inland provinces such as Gelderland, Noord-Brabant, and Limburg. Game and hare recipes appear in seventeenth-century Dutch cookery books such as De verstandige kock from 1667, in a period when sauces sharpened with vinegar or wine and scented with imported spices were common on prosperous tables. Older kitchen versions could be bound with hare blood or liver; the later household habit of using ontbijtkoek, spiced breakfast cake, shows how cloves, cinnamon, and rye sweetness became ordinary tools in the Dutch stew pot.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
hare pieces
Quantity
1.5kg
bone-in, trimmed
dry red wine
Quantity
750ml
red wine vinegar
Quantity
2 tablespoons
onions
Quantity
2 large
sliced
carrot
Quantity
1
sliced
bay leaves
Quantity
2
juniper berries
Quantity
10
lightly crushed
whole cloves
Quantity
4
black peppercorns
Quantity
1 teaspoon
cracked
thyme
Quantity
2 sprigs
smoked bacon or gerookt spek
Quantity
150g
diced
butter
Quantity
50g
divided
plain flour
Quantity
2 tablespoons
game, beef, or chicken stock
Quantity
300ml
small shallots or pearl onions
Quantity
200g
peeled
chestnut mushrooms
Quantity
250g
quartered
ontbijtkoek
Quantity
2 slices
crumbled
appelstroop or redcurrant jelly (optional)
Quantity
1 tablespoon
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Quantity
to taste
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| hare piecesbone-in, trimmed | 1.5kg |
| dry red wine | 750ml |
| red wine vinegar | 2 tablespoons |
| onionssliced | 2 large |
| carrotsliced | 1 |
| bay leaves | 2 |
| juniper berrieslightly crushed | 10 |
| whole cloves | 4 |
| black peppercornscracked | 1 teaspoon |
| thyme | 2 sprigs |
| smoked bacon or gerookt spekdiced | 150g |
| butterdivided | 50g |
| plain flour | 2 tablespoons |
| game, beef, or chicken stock | 300ml |
| small shallots or pearl onionspeeled | 200g |
| chestnut mushroomsquartered | 250g |
| ontbijtkoekcrumbled | 2 slices |
| appelstroop or redcurrant jelly (optional) | 1 tablespoon |
| salt and freshly ground black pepper | to taste |
Equipment Needed
- •Large glass or ceramic marinating bowl
- •Heavy braadpan or Dutch oven, 5-liter or larger
- •Fine sieve
- •Wide frying pan
- •Tongs or slotted spoon
Instructions
- 1
Marinate the hare
Put the hare pieces in a glass or ceramic bowl with the wine, vinegar, sliced onions, carrot, bay, juniper, cloves, peppercorns, and thyme. Cover and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours, turning once if you remember. The marinade is doing two jobs: softening the wild edge of the meat and lending the sauce its first dark note. Leave it for a night, not a weekend; too much acid makes lean hare woolly.
If your hare is very young or already boned by the game dealer, keep the marinating time closer to 8 hours. Older, wild hare can take the full night. - 2
Strain and dry
Lift the hare from the marinade and pat every piece very dry with kitchen paper. Strain the marinade into a jug and keep the onions and carrot in the sieve. Pick out the bay leaves, juniper, and cloves and set them with the liquid; discard the thyme stems. Wet meat browns badly, and browning is where the stew begins to taste like itself.
- 3
Brown in batches
Set a heavy braadpan or Dutch oven over medium heat and cook the smoked bacon until its fat runs and the edges take colour. Lift the bacon out with a slotted spoon. Add half the butter, season the hare lightly with salt, dust it with the flour, and brown it in batches. Do not crowd the pot. The flour should smell nutty and the meat should take a dark crust; pale hare makes a pale hazenpeper, and nobody came for that.
- 4
Build the braise
Add the reserved onions and carrot to the pot and cook for 5 minutes, scraping the browned bits from the bottom. Return the hare and bacon, pour in the strained marinade, and add the reserved bay, juniper, and cloves. Bring it to a lively boil for 3 minutes because the marinade touched raw meat. Add enough stock to almost cover the hare, lower to a bare simmer, cover, and braise for 1 hour 45 minutes on the stove or in a 150C oven.
- 5
Add mushrooms and onions
When the hare is beginning to loosen but is not yet tender, melt the remaining butter in a wide frying pan. Brown the shallots or pearl onions and the mushrooms until the mushrooms have given up their water and taken on colour at the edges. Add them to the stew and cook for another 30 to 45 minutes, until the hare pulls easily from the bone.
- 6
Bind the sauce
Lift the hare pieces out of the pot. Remove the bay leaves, cloves, and juniper as best you can; a stray juniper is charming, a bitten clove less so. If you want an easier table, pull the meat from the bones in large pieces and return it to the pot. Stir in the crumbled ontbijtkoek a handful at a time and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, until the sauce darkens, thickens, and clings to the meat. Taste only now for salt and pepper. Add the appelstroop or redcurrant jelly if the wine has made the sauce too sharp.
If the sauce tightens too much, loosen it with a splash of stock. If it is thin, simmer uncovered a little longer. Ontbijtkoek thickens politely, but it still expects you to watch the pot. - 7
Rest and serve
Let the hazenpeper rest off the heat for 20 minutes before serving, or cool it quickly and refrigerate it overnight. Reheat gently the next day, stirring now and then so the ontbijtkoek-bound sauce does not catch. Serve with potato puree, rodekool, red cabbage, and stoofpeertjes, little pears stewed in wine or syrup. Hou het altijd simpel: the stew is the ceremony.
Chef Tips
- •The calendar sets this dish as surely as the tide sets the menu. Fresh hare belongs to late autumn and winter; outside season, buy properly frozen hare from a trusted game dealer, or make a venison wildpeper and save the name hazenpeper for hare.
- •Run your fingers over wild hare after marinating and remove any shot you find. If the animal was shot with lead, trim generously around damaged areas; history is no excuse for carelessness.
- •Some older game kitchens thickened hazenpeper with hare blood or mashed liver. I use ontbijtkoek here because it is a real Dutch household answer: spice, rye sweetness, and body in one slice, with no awkward conversation at the butcher.
- •Make it a day ahead. The sauce settles, the spice softens, and the hare becomes easier to serve. Christmas kitchens love a dish that improves while you ignore it.
- •Drink the same sort of sturdy red wine you used in the pot, or a dark Belgian-style beer with enough bitterness to meet the sweet spice of the ontbijtkoek.
Advance Preparation
- •Marinate the hare the evening before, 8 to 12 hours ahead.
- •The finished stew is best after a night in the refrigerator; cool it quickly, cover, and reheat gently the next day.
- •Keeps up to 3 days refrigerated. It also freezes for up to 2 months, though the mushrooms will soften a little.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 410g)
Calories
485 calories
Total Fat
22 g
Saturated Fat
9 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
11 g
Cholesterol
155 mg
Sodium
1100 mg
Total Carbohydrates
28 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
12 g
Protein
40 g
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