hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with beer braised lamb shanks
that's right we survived another winner and give or take a few White Walkers it
really wasn't that bad but anyway Woodspring currently being sprung one
food I'm always thinking about this time of year Islam and when you combine that
with the fact that I'm pretty much always thinking about beer the result
was this very delicious a very easy and extremely comforting dish so with that
let's go hang get started with the start of the show our shanks
and I'm just gonna do two of them and as far as portion goes one per person is
perfect and since these things require absolutely no trimming we'll just go
ahead and skip right to the part where we generously season with salt and
freshly ground black pepper and of course we'll be doing both sides but
wait there's more whenever we're seasoning a couple hunks of meat like
this especially if we're on butcher paper once we've done both sides what we
want to do is sort of pick up the meat with our tongs and then give it the old
tap a tap on the paper so that we pick up any excess seasoning with the areas
that have not been seasoned already so just a little possibly unnecessary tip
for you but anyway we'll go ahead and season those up at which point we'll
head to the stove where we're gonna Brown these up over medium-high heat and
a little bit of olive oil and hopefully some kind of deep sided pan or pot where
our shanks just barely fit in in a single layer and if I remember I will
review pan and pot choices for this recipe on the blog post but anyway like
I said we'll go ahead and brown these over medium high which I will admit is
not gonna be the easiest thing in the world or if you had someone designed to
cut a meat with the purpose of being really really hard to Brown they'd
probably come up with a shape very similar to these shanks ok so there's
not really a lot of flat areas which does make this Syrian a little bit more
challenging but don't worry the good news is we don't have to really brown it
that well so we'll just turn that around the best we can occasionally finding a
flat or flattish surface and even though we're not gonna get that beautiful
uniform searing we usually shoot for what's still happening is that meat
juice is caramelizing down to the bottom of the pot and even though there's not a
ton of it believe it or not that stuff is really what's gonna add a lot of
flavor to our sauce so I gave those about 5 minutes or so
browning those to the best of my abilities and what we'll do once those
look cool this is go ahead and remove those from
the pan and we'll go ahead and set those aside for a minute while we reduce our
heat to medium because what we're gonna do in this
exact same pan has add some chopped up celery carrots and onions along with
some minced garlic as well as the traditional giant pinch of salt and what
we'll do is cook this over medium stirring for a few minutes and as you
all know that salts gonna draw moisture from the vegetables which is what's
going to deglaze all that meaty goodness from the bottom of the pan so we'll go
ahead and saute that stuff for a couple minutes at which point we'll add a
couple teaspoons or so of tomato paste which is not only going to add some
important acidity to balance the richness of the meat but it's also gonna
add to the overall gorgeousness of the finished sauce so we'll go ahead and
stir that in and cook that for another minute or so at which point is time for
the other star of the show one 12-ounce bottle of beer and yes it is very
suspicious I'm transferring that in using a measuring cup but anyway we're
gonna need some beer and I will review all the acceptable choices in the post
and then we'll also go ahead and toss in a couple sprigs of rosemary and we'll
give that a quick stir for no apparent reason at which point we want to crank
our heat up to high so that we can bring this mixture up to a simmer before
carefully adding our lamb shanks back in and for good luck we'll give those a
quick toss and what we will eventually call a sauce and then once that's been
accomplished what we'll do is reduce our heat to low cover these and let them
simmer gently until very very tender as tested by you and your trustworthy Fork
and it's gonna depend on the size but it's probably gonna take about two and a
half three hours or so and since we aren't cooking these with a ton of
liquid I do like to turn these over after about an hour and don't even
bother poking these with a fork at this point as they are still gonna be
extremely hard and rubbery so we'll go ahead and give those a flip and then
we'll recover and continue simmering on low until like I said these are
completely tender and ready to eat except that's not exactly what I'm gonna
do all right my preferred method for these is to cook them two hours the
first day and then let them cool and refrigerate them and then finish the
cooking the next day so these are what mine looks like after simmering for two
hours and they were almost but not quite tender yet
so what I'm gonna do like I said is turn the heat off and let these cool down to
room temp before transferring those into the fridge overnight and besides
breaking up the long cooking time I also think this method is gonna produce a
superior texture and flavor all right you know how people are always saying oh
this tastes good but it tastes so much better the next day so this time we're
just gonna do that on purpose but there's actually another big advantage
which I will explain after showing you what this looks like after a night in
the fridge and that is by using this two day method it's super easy to remove
that fat off the top all right once cold that stuff really firms up which makes
it fairly easy to lift off the top and by the way that gamy flavor people
associate with lamb a lot of that comes from the fat so by removing this it does
make the dish a little more mild of course having said that this step is
optional so you decide I mean you are after all the Pat Boone of your fat
spoon but personally I do recommend it and then what we'll do once our surface
has sans fat his head over to the stove and place this over low heat and we will
slowly bring that up to a simmer covered at which point we will give those a flip
and then all we have to do is recover these and simply simmer them on low
until completely tender and what we're looking for is the point where this meat
is just about to start falling off the bone okay it's not falling off yet but
the fork is gonna go in very easily and with just a little bit of effort we
could if we wanted to pull that me cleanly off the bone which is basically
the condition man we're in right here in case you're keeping score at home that
took me about 45 minutes to reheat and finish and then what we'll want to do
once our lamb is tender is go ahead and remove that from the pot and then keep
that warm while we raise our heat to high and reduce our sauce which is only
going to take a few minutes so we'll go ahead and crank that up and
reduce it by about I don't know half maybe and you'll see even though we
didn't add any starch thanks to that sticky gelatinous
goodness from the meat and a little bit of broken up vegetable by the time this
is reduced by about half it should have some nice body to it and I should
mention because lamb shank is really a succulent rich dish I don't think it
really works as well with a thick gravy like sauce all right I think something
of this viscosity works much better so I'm gonna reduce my until looks a little
som like this and that's it once reduced we'll go
ahead and taste that for seasoning and I decided to add a little pinch of salt
and a shake or two of cayenne and once that stirred in and we double check to
make sure everything's tasting exactly how we want we are officially ready to
spoon that lusciousness over our lamb which is hopefully sitting on top of
some spring onion mashed potatoes and while I was doing this I couldn't decide
whether it smelled better or looked better so I had no choice but to declare
that a tie and for a final touch I decided to finish up with a few more
slices of our spring onions also known as green onions and scallions and that's
it our beer braised lamb shanks are ready to enjoy and don't let the knife
fool you alright just using a fork that Mishi come off the bone very easily and
that my friends was an amazing bite of food as I mentioned lamb shank is very
rich very succulent are just loaded with all kinds of sticky goodness and like
all shanks no matter what animal we're talking about it has sort of an
underlying sweetness to it which along with the aromatic sweetness of the
vegetables parish perfectly with that subtle bitterness of the beer so if
you'll pardon the expression I really do love the flavor profile here and I know
it does kind of look like a massive portion but that bone and join are
pretty big so I find the amount of meat you get off one of these the perfect
size portion for one adult human oh and speaking of bone in case you're
wondering yes it is completely acceptable to pick this up and eat it
Renaissance Fair style like one of those ye olde turkey legs just be careful not
to drip it on ye olde shirt but anyway that's it my take on beer braised lamb
shanks so comforting so delicious and absolutely amazing paired with the
spring potatoes which I really should give you
the recipe for someday actually you know what I'll give it to you now it's just
regular mashed potatoes with a handful of green onions dirty pop regardless of
what you serve this in Iran I really do hope you give it a try soon so head over
to food wishes calm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you