Your Friend The Separating Jug : Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks with Mushrooms

I'm very much with that nice Mr. Alton Brown when he says there is no room in the kitchen for unitaskers.  Theoretically, at least; there are always some bits of kit that only do one thing, but they do it so well or that thing is so important, that you need them.  And one of those is the separating jug.

Here's the separating jug after I did a slow roast of leg of lamb.  Fat still in the separater, juice in the Pyrex jug on the right.

About 250ml of fat, 350ml of juice, wine etc.  If I'd made the sauce without separating the fat ...

Here's another one after doing slow cooked lamb shanks.

Not as bad as the first one, but still a good 100 - 150 ml of fat from an otherwise innocuous looking dish.

So, do you cook roasts or stews?  Do you have a separating jug?  Why not?


Slow Cooked Lamb Shanks

Serves 4 as a main with leftovers depending on how hungry you are.

100g speck (or pancetta or kaessler), but into small cubes (about 5mm) or batons

4 lamb leg shanks (will be about 400g each, maybe more)

1 medium onion, white or brown, sliced

A couple of bay leaves, a couple of sprigs of rosemary (or 1 tbsp dried), 1 dozen or so peppercorns

1 cup dry white Vermouth

500g mushrooms, large button/cap or Swiss Brown, sliced about 1cm thick

Heat a pan to medium; heat your oven to 110 C.  Cook the speck in the pan until brown and flavourful and as much fat as possible has rendered out.


Raise the heat to medium high then brown the shanks in the pan, using a little olive oil if the fat from the speck isn't enough.

Cook the onions in the pan for a couple of minutes on medium high - we're not trying to soften them here, we want to get them a bit brown for extra flavour.  Put them in the casserole too.

Deglaze the pan with the cup of white wine, stir vigourously to get all the yummy brown bits off the bottom of the pan, and pour into the pot.

Put in the herbs and spices and enough water to almost cover - probably between one and two cups.  Put the lid on the casserole, put the casserole into the oven and walk away. 

Go and watch an absurdly long film - Fellowship of the Ring (171 min) would be about right, then come back and check.  It won't be ready yet, but check just in case.  Check by poking at the meat - if ready it will give easily to a finger or spoon - or by pulling gently at a bone - if the bone starts to come loose, it's ready.  Maybe give it a stir, make sure the bits on top aren't drying out.

Assuming it's not ready, go listen to the director's commentary for an hour or so.  Ponder that the man who reinvented the epic fantasy film genre and the New Zealand economy also did this.  

Mean while cook the mushrooms.  I sprayed them with a little olive oil and cooked them on a tray in the oven for about 30 minutes, but you could saute them if you like.  My way was easier.

After a  total of four hours the shanks should be done.  Remove them gently to a pan or plate or whatever, cover with foil to rest and leave in a warm place.

Meanwhile strain the liquid from the casserole into the separating jug.  Pour off the juice into the pan and start reducing it; try to pick out the bits of speck from the solids and put them in the pan too.

Reduce by about half to two thirds and serve as a jus.  We just put the mushrooms on the plate, then a piece of lamb, some mash and the jus.  We also had some nice microwaved then sauted carrots and zucchini but they don't rate a photo.  This was just a casual Saturday night dinner for the two of us.  I may have done fancier sides if we had company.

The shank cuts are huge, so we actually cut them into pieces to put on the plate to get a better balance.  The photo below is about half a shank (the photogenic half without a bone in it).

Cooking Notes

Lamb leg shanks - that's the cut across the leg just above the knee.   When a leg is done as a single piece in a leg roast, this cut is the bottom part of the roast. It looks like a humongous leg chop. It should be cut one-and-a-half to two inches thick.  It has a much higher meat-to-bone ratio than shank proper, costs only slightly more than shank, but still has lots of connective tissue to convert to gelatin and make the final dish gooey and delicious.

Heavy, well lidded casserole - we have a cast iron Dutch oven from Ikea of all places. It works a treat, was a fraction of the cost of a Le Creuset and is a great size for cooking for four (which for us is generally two with leftovers).

Want to get the luscious brown caramelising on the meat?  While the meat is resting and the sauce reducing, crank your grill up to full speed.  For a minute or so, immediately before serving, put all the meat on a tray right below the grill.  It will only affect the surface and won't have time to cook the interior any further.

Why white Vermouth as the flavourful liquid?  Don't you braise lamb shanks in red wine?  Well, my friend SMT is a very wise man and a long time ago he told me always to use white wine.  You can always add red wine later but you can't take it away; this way leftover meat or liquid could form the base of a soup, for example.

Other things to do with the sauce

• Make a gravy by adding a little roux (or a tablespoon of Gravox if you're among friends)
• Make a red wine sauce by adding a half cup each of red wine and port while reducing
• Enrich the flavour slightly by adding 10ml of tomato paste that has been cooked gently in a non-stick pan with some olive oil until brown.  It sounds odd, but trust me.
• Sharpen up the dish with some salsa verde on top or a tablespoon of rinsed capers in the jus (only add them at the very last minute or they go grey)

Happy separating,

Ecumer