How to cook the Easter Bunny
If you ever need to skin a rabbit by yourself, simply make a few slits around its neck with a paring knife and pull off the fur in one swift, downward and decisive motion. Not that I make a habit of it. But you will soon learn that a rabbit carcass – stripped of its coat and ears (those ears!) – has something of the demonic about it. You may recall Thumper, the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, butter-wouldn’t-melt cartoon rabbit from Bambi (1942). Well, pre-cooked but post-skinning, he would not look out of place in a mid-ranking tier of Dante’s hell, nor in the background of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
You can eat Thumper farmed or wild. Farmed rabbits are fattier – because of their relatively sedentary lives they become slothful and venal. It makes the meat easier to cook and catch, but somewhat less noble for that. Try roasting the leg and serving it in a mustard sauce: lapin à la moutarde is one of the great French dishes. But rabbit’s reputation for turning dry is not unearned. You must keep a very careful eye on the thermodynamics – otherwise prepare for a mouthful that somehow conspires to be both papery and flabby at once. Then again, what is lunch without a little jeopardy?
Meanwhile, wild rabbit is tough and sinewy and really only suits a slowly, slowly cooked ragù, best stirred in with tagliatelle – or “Bunny Pasta”, as my father introduced it to me when I was six. And if that sound I hear is you, reader, wincing, then cut it out. Because once you get over the cuter-than-thou countenance, rabbit makes a sauce far more interesting than beef or pork could ever offer. More than that – if you are one of those cooks who needs a worthy excuse for meat-eating – you will also be helping the Great British Countryside.
Like deer, there are far too many rabbits out there – terrorising rural England with their big eyes and cotton tails and enthusiastic mating patterns. There is no reason not to eat more of them. But deer have Bambi and rabbits Watership Down working on their side – anthropomorphising the animals beyond the point of being edible. This was a great mistake of our literary and cinematic forbears. If the brains down at Walt Disney Productions had any real sense of social responsibility, they would have made a film about how cigarettes have souls instead.
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Incidentally, I am not minded to forgive the Easter Bunny for much – that nasty and moralising Lutheran invention. The 17th-century folktale goes something like this: around Eastertide a travelling hare would spy on Saxon children and apportion candy according to the goodness of their behaviour. Tricking vulnerable young ones into the myth of moral meritocracy is one thing. But elevating the creatures to too-sweet-to-be-eaten status is quite another. The Protestant Reformation changed many things about this country, and I suspect taking rabbit off the mainstream British menu is one of them. Is it any wonder the French and the Italians cannot get enough of the pesks?
Anyway, happy Easter – a time of rejuvenation, growth, optimism, renewal, yada yada. This is when the normcore British dining room fills up with that pink, lightly gamey, turbo-trad meat, imported 11,000 miles from New Zealand. I am talking about our springtime, slavish devotion to lamb. But the thing is – unlike the rabbits – English lambs are not ready to be killed, let alone butchered, marinated and mint sauced at this time of the year. Beyond the biblical resonance (and be honest, Easter is as secular as Christmas these days), the tradition cannot justify itself. Unless this is an act of diplomatic grace towards the Kiwis, who frankly don’t really need it from us.
And so may I suggest a paschal rabbit? There is a serious point (sorry!) here too. If we are going to eat meat – with all the associated environmental and ethical connotations – we have to be adults about it. Not wanting to eat a rabbit because it is cute is no more sensical than refusing to eat a cow because it is piebald. And look, it’s hardly like I am suggesting you mince and sear the family labradoodle.
[Further reading: We must love WH Auden or die]
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This article appears in the 25 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special
