Camp Braised Small Game Stew with Wild Rice
A wine-braised groundhog or rabbit stew built over a fire, thickened with wild rice flour.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 14 oz
- cal / oz
- 51
- protein
- 48 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 30 min
- cook
- 150 min
- total time
- 180 min
- water
- 1500 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Groundhog, cut into pieces | 2-3 lb | rabbit or squirrel works the same way |
|---|---|---|
| Dry white wine | 2 cups | boxed wine travels better than glass |
| Garlic | 1 bulb, plus 3 loose cloves | |
| Rosemary | 1 sprig | |
| Thyme | a small handful of sprigs | |
| Bay leaves | 2 | |
| Kosher salt and black pepper | to taste | |
| Olive oil | 3 tbsp | |
| Slab bacon or smoked pork belly | 4 oz, diced | |
| Mixed vegetables | 3 cups | carrot, onion, celery; whatever the cooler holds |
| Tomato | 1 large, chopped | or half a small can |
| Chicken stock | 2 qt | boxed, or bouillon and water |
| Wild rice flour | 3 tbsp | grind wild rice in a blender at home |
| Dry sherry | 1/4 cup | |
| Wild rice | 1 cup | parched wild rice cooks faster |
| Sweet corn | 1 ear, kernels cut off | |
| Butter | 2 tbsp | unsalted |
| Hot sauce | a few dashes | |
| Scallions | 2, sliced |
Method
- The night before, salt the meat and put it in a zip bag with the wine, the split garlic bulb, rosemary, thyme, and bay. Keep it cold in the cooler.
- Pull the meat out and dry it. Save the wine and herbs. Build a fire and let it burn down to coals.
- Render the bacon in a dutch oven over the coals. Set it aside, then brown the meat in the fat and oil, a few pieces at a time. Crowding it means steaming it.
- Add the vegetables and chopped garlic. Cook until the onion goes soft, then add the tomato and stir for a minute.
- Pour in the reserved wine and scrape the pot bottom. Let it reduce by half, then add the stock, the herbs, and the meat.
- Cover, set the pot on low coals with a few on the lid, and hold a bare simmer for two hours. The meat should pull off the bone.
- Cook the wild rice separately in salted water, or add it to the pot for the last 45 minutes if you want one pot and don't mind a darker broth.
- Lift the meat out, pull it off the bones, and return it. Whisk the wild rice flour with the sherry into a slurry and stir it in. Simmer ten minutes until it thickens.
- Add the corn, butter, hot sauce, and bacon. Taste for salt. Scallions on top, rice underneath.
This is a long braise, so it belongs at a basecamp or a car-camping site where the fire is going anyway. Tough, lean game meat needs hours of low wet heat and an acid to work on it. The overnight wine soak does the acid part, and it doubles as your packing liquid — the meat rides in the cooler in the same bag it marinates in.
The wild rice flour is the piece worth carrying. It thickens the broth without a roux and without flour dust everywhere, and it tastes like the rice already in the bowl. Bacon and butter cover the fat that game doesn’t have. Keep the pot at a bare simmer; a hard boil over open coals will tighten the meat and no amount of extra time will loosen it again.
Packing
Meat marinates in a double-bagged zip bag in the cooler; the marinade is the packing liquid. Wild rice, rice flour, and herbs go in one dry bag. Wine and sherry ride in small screw-top bottles, not glass.
Variations
- No game? Two pounds of bone-in chicken thighs behave the same way and need half the time.
- Skip the rice flour and mash a handful of the cooked vegetables against the pot side to thicken instead.
- On a grill grate, use a heavy lidded pot and a low corner of the fire; the timing does not change.
https://foragerchef.com/a-groundhog-stew