Shanks a lot!
Sorry about the pun, but I’ve cooked shanks twice this week and I’m so excited about how they turned out and with so little work. I’ll confess I get a bit cranky when people whine about how long it takes to make homemade soup or chop vegetables, or that bone-in cuts take too long or there is so much waste, etc., especially when I know from experience that it is possible to eat good, home cooked food without a lot of slaving over a hot stove, and that bones actually add something to the food, even though they are seemingly unconsumed.
It does take a different mindset and a different way of cooking, though. And I’ve learned, this change requires some commitment and patience, because it doesn’t happen overnight. My own cooking continues to evolve into a more traditional, hearth-style cuisine. I can’t even remember the last time I cooked boneless chicken breasts or pork chops. My quickest meals are usually either non-meat (fish or eggs) or use meat previously slow cooked or grilled steaks. But fearing meat dishes that take hours to cook is a thing of the past. They are surprisingly easy, and rather fool-proof, even for novice cooks. It just requires thinking about dinner earlier.
Shanks are a great slow-cooking (lazy) meal. Easy on the budget, easy on the labor. I cooked mine in the oven, but it would be easy to convert oven-braised recipes to slow cooker appliance recipes. All slow cookers come with instructions on how to convert regular braised recipes - usually reducing the amount of liquid by a third or so, cutting dense veggies smaller and placing the densest root veggies at the bottom of the pot to make sure they cook through, and allowing a lot more time to cook (great for days when we need to be away from home).
First I made Beef Shanks Braised in Coconut Milk with Ginger and Cumin (sort of Moroccan flavored), from Bruce Aidell’s The Complete Meat Cookbook. I halved the recipe because I had only a small package of beef shank cuts, which came from a little “hobby” farm run by a nice couple in my county. I can’t provide the exact recipe because the book is copyrighted, but frankly, all these braised meat dishes are variations on a theme and I’ll bet there are similar online versions. I do highly recommend the book, though.
The shanks were cut into cross sections, sort of like little steaks with bone in the middle. I had three pieces. The meat does shrink, so be sure to allow enough. One of my pieces hardly had any meat at all, and was mostly a huge section of bone, but I included it anyway, because the bone and a cartilage adds a tremendous amount of rich flavor, not to mention a full assortment of easily absorbed minerals, so that’s good news for our own bones. You don’t get that from watery canned broth! Our braised bone broth has no chemical additives like MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, excessive salt, or preservatives, either.
I made the beef shanks on a weekend, so I used the oven, since I would be around the house, checking now and then (sort of). The recipe called for dredging the beef in seasoned flour. I often skip this step, but this time I used seasoned quinoa flour. Your call. But the basic technique is pretty straightforward. Lightly sauté onions, carrots, garlic, and ginger (I used home rendered lard, but coconut oil would have been good, too) until soft, then set aside. In the same pan, brown the meat in some more fat (again I used home rendered lard), set aside. Toast the dry spices 1 minute in the pan to release aromatics, then add water or stock to deglaze the pan. Stir in coconut milk and remaining stock/water, and bring to a boil. Put everything into an oven-proof covered casserole/pan (using one “casserole” style covered pan for everything saves washing extra dishes/pans) and bake for 2.5 - 3.5 hours at about 300-325° F.
Then comes the best part. Go do something else while the meat braises. Watch a movie, knit, read, take a nap, organize your iTunes, do some laundry, garden, call your mother/sister/best friend from kindergarten, write a letter, wash some lettuce and get the salad ready, kick a ball around with your kid, play a board game, meditate, pray, whatever. Most of the cooking time is completely hands off!
I’ll confess that I wasn’t planning to serve these the same day, so I left them in the oven during our supper, and being a half recipe and letting go the full 3.5 hours, I thought it looked a tad overdone when I removed it from the oven. Ok, really overdone. The sauce was really thick and dark. But it wasn’t burnt. I let it cool, then stuck it in the fridge.
No worries. Two days later, I added another can of coconut milk and a touch of water and brought it to a slow simmer on the stove. My husband raved about it, saying it was one of the best things I had ever made (no, I didn’t tell him that I thought I had over-cooked it - that’s our secret). The extra coconut milk made a very creamy gravy sauce and the meaty bones added a deep richness to the flavor. So the overcooking just seemed to concentrate the flavor even more. Just about every tough, connective part had turned into something “flavorfully melt-y”, and the meat was falling apart, “fork tender”. Other than the bones, there was just the tiniest amount of bits of non-meaty “things” left over. I only wish I had made more.
So, two days later I noticed two lonely meaty lamb shanks in the butcher case, looking like they wanted to go home to an appreciative cook. This time I used a recipe from The River Cottage Meat Book, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. It’s a UK book, but available in the US, and oh, so good for everything meat (geez, I just looked it up on Amazon.com to get the link and I’m really glad I got my copy for $25 when I did!). Not just good recipes, but good reading, too, but I’m getting distracted. Citrus-Braised Lamb Shanks is what I made. Basically similar to the beef shanks recipe, except with onions, carrots, and celery, thyme, a bit of tomato paste, orange and lemon juice and zest, plus white wine (I used dry vermouth) and stock/water. This sauce is also very rich and delicious, but less thick than the coconut milk based sauce. So at the end, I removed the shanks and kept them warm, then boiled the sauce down a bit to thicken it, then simmered the sauce about 10 minutes with a handful or two of quinoa added. That thickened it up just enough and gave it a bit more substance (and you won’t miss rice or potatoes this way, either). The recipe also says it adapts well to mallard and other game birds.
The two lamb shanks had more meat on them than the beef shank sections, so the first night the three of us only ate one of the shanks. My son ate the meat, but wasn’t interested in the saucy quinoa. I served it with roasted skinny green beans with soy sauce and a tossed salad. Gabriel doesn’t eat as much salad greens as we do so he had carrot and red pepper strips.
The next night, I heated up the leftovers in a saucepan with some added water to thin it out a bit. Then when it was heated through, I pulled the shank out, added cauliflower florets and cooked covered until they were tender. Meanwhile, I deboned the shank and cut the meat into smaller pieces, then returned those to the pan to heat through again. I put the bone back on top to take the photo above. There was a very small pile of soft connective bits that I left out (my husband would probably have eaten them, but with a kid at the table, well you know how they are about that stuff). And Gabriel loved it and dug in with gusto! Super easy dinner, side raw veggie strips, and 1/3 avocado each. I would have made a tossed salad, but we were out of lettuce until the CSA box this afternoon.
Now that I think about it, it probably takes more time to type and proof this post than I actually spent actively “working” in the kitchen for all three meals.
Going Against the Grain
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
