How to cook the ultimate lamb shanks Lamb Shanks are generally our favourite Friday night meal, the time it requires to cook, however when it can be finished the meats falls cleanly off your bone as if it continues for you to be glued on. We found this slow cooked lamb shanks You Tube video which may well assist show within more detail your greatest way to cook a lamb shank, the metro get compiled a set of a number of the greatest Lamb Shank recipes which are available online. If you’re preparing a meal for two, slowly braised lamb shanks are almost foolproof – one shank neatly feeds one person and all the prep can be done well ahead of time. But how do you make the dish unforgettable? At first I get preoccupied with the sheep breed and its age but there’s a whole article in itself on the subject of the provenance of your meat. In reality, any grass-fed British lamb will do. My favourites are the slow-grown petite Shetlands (www.foodshetland.com) or Welsh rare breeds (www.rbst.org.uk/butchers). How you treat the ruminant after you bring it home from the butchers influences the character of your supper. There are two schools of thought on this one: those who use spices and herbs to enhance the flavour of the meat and those who leave the cloven-hoofed one’s gamey meatiness to sing alone.
Tamarind’s talented chef, Alfred Prasad, is in the former camp. To make his Hyderabadi shanks (www.greatbritishchefs.com), I seal the shanks in a wild jamboree of spices – cinnamon, cardamom and cloves – that have been sautéed with onion. Next comes a ginger and garlic paste, more spices (turmeric, chilli, cumin and coriander), tomatoes and yoghurt, then an hour-long cook. The cinnamon and cloves add a warmth while the eucalyptus-nuanced cardamom and fiery ginger are fragrant and sinus-clearing. There’s a gentle heat throughout. I’d like to keep this uplifting nature in my final dish. In a Google search, the first recipe to ping up enthusiastically is Incredible Baked Lamb Shanks from www.jamieoliver.com. Oliver is in the opposite camp to Prasad – this is unashamed simplicity. Stuffing the shanks with a pocket of rosemary and thyme butter, I wrap them in foil on a small bed of carrots and alliums. This one cooks for two and a half hours. The Mediterranean herbs are instantly gratifying and I find myself falling in love with the meat’s untainted purity. My only small moan is that I’m looking for a meal in one go and this seems rather like half a meal – the meat half. So I try Nigella’s aromatic lamb shank stew from her book Nigella Bites (also on www.nigella.com), with a cooking time of about two hours. This one features red lentils plus a bundle of sticky aromatic promise. I brown the shanks, make a ‘mush’ of onion and garlic, then sauté it – so far, so good. However, things take a wrong turn when I stir in turmeric, ground ginger, chilli, cinnamon and nutmeg, adding honey, soy sauce and marsala. I’m sure those with a sweet tooth would love it but I