Kaninchenbraten

The story

Most Americans think of lamb or ham at Easter, but German cooks name a third meat for the holiday: rabbit. Regional papers list Kaninchenbraten beside roast lamb and Osterschinken, the Easter ham, as typical meats once the Lenten fast is over, and German cooking portals call braised rabbit a traditional Easter dish alongside leg of lamb. Rabbit came to German tables for practical reasons. Many families kept rabbits in garden hutches or in sheds on their allotment plots and slaughtered them regularly, especially in the years after World War II. Hobby breeding has not disappeared: a 2016 expert estimate counted about 400,000 private rabbit breeders in Germany, and roughly a third of the rabbit meat produced in the country comes from them. German recipes usually braise rabbit in a rich sauce rather than roasting it dry. One common home method, often labeled grandmother's recipe, rubs the pieces with mustard, browns them with bacon and root vegetables, braises them in white wine and stock, and finishes the sauce with cream; other cooks braise it in red wine instead. For Easter Sunday, March 28, 2027, order the rabbit from a butcher at least a week ahead.