4 Frenched Lamb Shanks (ask your butcher to do this for you)
Plain flour
Salt'n Pepper
Smoked Paprika
Olive oil
3 peeled and finely diced carrots
3 stalks celery finely diced
1 brown onion diced
4 garlic cloves diced
1 small red capsicum diced
1 large leek finely diced
1/2 litre red wine
2 litres chicken stock
2 800gms tinned crushed tomatoes
Fresh oregano,thyme.
3 bay leaves
Heat a heavy based saucepan with olive oil.
Dust your shanks in the flour, put shanks into the pan and add salt,pepper,paprika.
Seal the meat, try to get a nice caramel color on the shank.
Remove from shanks from pan, turn down heat. Might need a slash more olive oil.
Add all the diced vegetables and sweat this off till the onion is creamy and a wee bit colored.
Then deglaze the pan with red wine and cook off the alcohol for about 5 mins. Stir it through and let the vegetables soak the in the red wine.
Add the chicken stock and tomatoes. Then throw in your herbs and bay leaves.
Stir through.
If you are going to be using a slow cooker follow this step...put shanks into cooker and tip the vegetable sauce over them,put lid on and set to high and go shopping for the day!
If you are using the oven or the stovetop....put shanks into your saucepan of vegetable sauce, lid on and put into oven for 2-3 hours. Keep checking that the sauce has not evaporated too much during the cooking process.
Oven temp about 160. Stove top on simmer.
Shanks are ready when the meat is tender and almost falling off the bone.
Serve with creamy mashed potato,buttery green beans and crunchy french bread. Dont forget to drink a rocking good glass of red wine with this meal.
This is a great dish to make the day before. Then all you need to do is reheat the shanks with some of the sauce.
