Beer-Braised Lamb Shanks - Food Wishes - Spring Lamb

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

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 310,275

Rating: 4.9328928 out of 5

Keywords: Lamb, Shanks, Beer, Braised, Spring, meat, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipe, main, dinner, easter, st. patricks day, holiday

Id: O_mDWTIWdAA

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 13 2018