Recipe by Jodie Smith

Slow Cooked Moroccan Lamb Shanks

Name: Slow Cooked Moroccan Lamb Shanks
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 180 min
Total time: 195 min
Yield: 4

Serves4 people

Prep15 min

Cook180 min

Jump to recipe

Shop the pantry

Slow & Steamy' Moroccan Style Tagine - Gourmet Sauce Mix 75g

$9.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

Four shanks, browned hard and then left alone in a low oven for three hours, until the meat slides off the bone under a spoon. A sachet of Moroccan spice mix, preserved lemon and olives do the seasoning, and the bones do the rest. Serves 4. Prep 15 minutes, cook 3 hours, almost all of it unattended.

Ingredients

Serves 4. Prep 15 minutes, cook 3 hours at 160C. The shanks are a butcher buy and worth ordering a few days ahead, since four matching ones are not always in the cabinet. The sachet, the preserved lemons and the olives come from us.

In the pot
4	lamb shanks, about 400g each, French trimmed (a butcher buy)
1 sachet	Gordon Rhodes Slow & Steamy Moroccan Style Tagine Gourmet Sauce Mix, 75g
2 tbsp	olive oil
2	brown onions, sliced thickly
3	garlic cloves, sliced
400g	tin of chopped tomatoes
500ml	chicken or beef stock
2	quarters of BELAZU Preserved Lemons, flesh scooped out, rind sliced thin
100g	Kangaroo Island Kalamata Olives, drained
1 tbsp	honey
Optional, for a deeper pot
1 tbsp	BELAZU Tagine Paste, stirred in with the stock
To serve
	couscous, or Good Hair Day Tricolore Spaghetti
	coriander or flat leaf parsley, chopped
	plain yoghurt

The quantities above are ours, scaled to four shanks. The sachet carries its own directions on the back, so if yours reads differently, the pack wins.

What is in the sachet

It is a dry mix rather than a wet sauce, built on cornflour and brown sugar with the spices over the top: paprika at 7 per cent, then ginger, black pepper, cinnamon at 5 per cent, cumin at 3 per cent, chilli, turmeric and coriander, with salt, dried garlic and coriander leaf. Two things follow from that. The cornflour means the braising liquid thickens itself as it cooks, so there is no reducing at the end and no flour on the meat at the start. And the sugar means the sauce will catch if the oven is too hot, which is the argument for 160C and a lid rather than 180C and hope. The rest of the Gordon Rhodes shelf works the same way, and the Boxing Day turkey curry uses its sibling.

Why shanks, and why three hours

A shank is one of the hardest working muscles on the animal, wrapped in connective tissue that is inedible at two hours and silky at three. That collagen needs a low wet heat to turn to gelatine, and gelatine is what gives a braise its body and its shine. Rushing it at a higher temperature squeezes the water out of the muscle before the tissue has softened, which is how you get meat that is both dry and tough at the same time. The bone matters too: it holds the meat in shape through three hours of cooking and gives the sauce a richness that diced shoulder never quite reaches.

Method

Heat the oven to 160C, or 140C fan-forced.
Pat the shanks dry with paper towel and season them with salt. Dry meat browns, wet meat steams.
Brown them hard in the olive oil in a heavy lidded casserole over a high heat, two at a time, about 8 minutes a pair. Lift them onto a plate.
Turn the heat down, add the onions and garlic to the same pot and cook for 6 minutes until they soften and pick up the brown bits from the base.
Whisk the sachet into the stock in a jug until no lumps are left, then pour it into the pot with the tomatoes and the honey.
Bring it to a simmer, stirring, and let it thicken slightly.
Return the shanks and any juices to the pot. The liquid should come about two thirds of the way up them, so top up with water if it does not.
Put the lid on and cook in the oven for 2 hours 30 minutes, turning the shanks over once at the halfway mark.
Stir in the preserved lemon rind and the olives, then cook uncovered for a final 30 minutes so the tops of the shanks colour and the sauce tightens.
Rest for 10 minutes off the heat, then scatter with herbs and serve with couscous, a spoon of yoghurt and the sauce poured over.

Make it the day before

This is better on day two, which makes it one of the few centrepiece dishes you can finish before anyone arrives. Cool it, refrigerate it in the pot, lift the set fat off the top the next day and reheat it covered at 150C for 40 minutes. It keeps three days in the fridge and freezes well for three months, though the shanks take up a lot of room, so pull the meat off the bone first if freezer space is short. This is not a Christmas Day dish and is not trying to be. It is the one for the night the family arrives, when the oven is otherwise free and nobody wants to be cooking at 7pm.

Common questions

How long do lamb shanks need in the oven?

Three hours at 160C for shanks around 400g each, covered for the first two and a half and uncovered for the last half hour. Weight matters more than the clock: 500g shanks want an extra 20 to 30 minutes, and smaller ones are usually done at two and a half hours. The test is not time at all. Push a fork into the thickest part and twist. If the meat gives without resistance and starts to come away from the bone, it is ready. If it holds together, give it another 20 minutes and check again.

Can I make this in a slow cooker?

Yes, and the browning still has to happen in a frying pan first. Brown the shanks and soften the onions on the stove, whisk the sachet into the stock, then put everything except the preserved lemon and olives into the slow cooker. Low for 7 to 8 hours or high for 4 to 5, adding the lemon and olives for the last 30 minutes. One difference to plan for: a slow cooker loses no liquid, so cut the stock back to 350ml, and if the sauce is thinner than you want at the end, lift the shanks out and reduce it in a pan for 10 minutes.

What do I serve with lamb shanks?

Something that will take on the sauce. Couscous is the traditional partner and the fastest, since it needs boiling water and five minutes under a lid. Mashed potato with plenty of butter is the other obvious answer. For something less expected, Good Hair Day Tricolore Spaghetti holds a heavy sauce better than most dried pasta. Green beans or a sharp leaf salad on the side, and warm flatbread for the sauce left in the bottom of the pot.

A braise like this eats through preserved lemons, so if you find yourself with most of a jar left, our guide to the BELAZU paste and what to do with it is the next thing to read, and the beef version with the paste is the same idea with chuck instead of shanks. The sachets sit in sauces and mixes, the jars in the pantry, and the whole slow-cook shelf is under gourmet meals. If you are sending dinner rather than cooking it, the Christmas hampers do that job instead. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.