Slow Cooker Lamb Shanks
Four shanks, browned hard and packed in a single layer. The sauce is reduced separately at the end, because a slow cooker will never do it for you.
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 8 hr 20 min
- Total
- 8 hr 45 min
- Serves
- 4
- Revisions
- 1
Allergens
- Celery
- Sulphites
Named from the ingredients as written, including those carried in from sub-recipes. This is not a guarantee — check the labels on what you actually buy, and note that a product’s recipe can change.
Ingredients
Serves
Shanks
To finish
Method
Shanks
Pat the shanks dry and season them all over with the salt.
Heat the oil in a large frying pan and brown the shanks two at a time, turning them until every face is deep brown — about 10 minutes a pair. This is slow, and it is where the colour and most of the flavour of the finished dish comes from.
Sit them in the slow cooker in a single layer, bones angled up if the pot is tight.
Pour off all but two tablespoons of fat, then cook the onion, carrot and celery for 8 minutes.
Add the garlic and tomato purée and stir for 2 minutes.
Add the wine and reduce it by half, scraping the base clean.
Pour it over the shanks with the stock, rosemary and orange peel. The liquid should come about two-thirds of the way up; the exposed tops are not a problem.
Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, until the meat has pulled back from the bone and gives completely to a spoon.
To finish
Lift the shanks out carefully — they will be barely holding together — and keep them warm.
Strain the liquid into a wide pan, pressing the vegetables to get everything out of them, and let it settle for 5 minutes so the fat can be skimmed off the top.
Boil it hard for 10 to 15 minutes, until reduced by about half and thick enough to coat a spoon. A slow cooker cannot reduce anything, so this pan is not optional — it is the step that turns cooking liquid into sauce.
Whisk in the redcurrant jelly, taste for salt, and pour it over the shanks.
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What to expect
- Taste
Rich, dark and sweet-savoury, with the wine and the orange giving it edges. Lamb shank tastes more strongly of lamb than any other cut and the sauce is built to stand up to that rather than to soften it.
- Aroma
Rosemary and browning lamb during the prep, then eight quiet hours, then the reduction, which concentrates the smell as much as the flavour.
- Texture
Completely soft and slightly sticky from the collagen, with the sauce thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and cling to the meat.
- Sound
Very little until the reduction, which is a proper rolling boil.
- How the flavour moves
Sweet and dark first, then the depth of the lamb, then rosemary and a citrus lift at the end that stops it being heavy. The redcurrant jelly is doing balance rather than sweetness.
- Serve it
Hot, on something hot. Mash goes cold under a shank if the plate is cold.
- Goes with
Mashed potato, soft polenta or white beans. Something green and slightly bitter beside it. A robust red.
Cook's notes
- Difficulty
Easy, and it looks like the hardest dish here, which is most of its appeal.
- Cost
Mid to high. Shanks are no longer the cheap cut they were.
- Equipment
A large slow cooker, a big frying pan, a sieve and a wide pan for reducing.
- When to make it
A day when people are coming, started in the morning.
- Best season
Autumn and winter.
- You know it is done when
The meat pulled back from the bone by a centimetre or more and the shank barely holding together when lifted.
- And it feels like
It should give completely to a spoon. If it needs a knife it needs another hour.
- Food safety
Well past any safe temperature. The slow cooker rules apply: never from frozen, no more than two-thirds full, and cool leftovers in shallow containers rather than in the crock.
- Where it goes wrong
- Serving the cooking liquid as sauce without reducing it, which is thin and disappointing after all that time.
- Not skimming the fat, of which lamb shank produces a great deal.
- Browning all four shanks at once, which steams them.
- Covering the shanks completely with liquid, which is unnecessary and dilutes the sauce.
- Lifting them out with tongs at the neck, which is where they fall apart. Use two spatulas.
- If it does go wrong
Thin sauce: keep boiling; it will take longer than you think. Greasy: let the strained liquid settle for five minutes and skim properly, or chill it and lift the set fat. Tough: another hour. Falling apart while lifting: expected, and a sign it is done rather than a fault.
- Making it ahead
Braise a day ahead and refrigerate in the liquid — the fat sets on top and lifts off in one piece, which is easier than skimming. Reduce and reheat on the day.
- Keeping it
Three days in the fridge, in the sauce.
- Reheating
Covered, at 160C fan for 25 minutes, with a splash of water.
- Freezing
Three months, in the sauce. Excellent.
- Leftovers
Strip the meat off and fold it through pappardelle with the sauce, which is arguably the better dish.
- Scaling it
Four shanks is what a large slow cooker holds in one layer. Stacking them means uneven cooking.
- Substitutions
Beef shin works with the same timings and is cheaper. Ox cheek is excellent. Port or Marsala can replace some of the wine and will need less redcurrant jelly at the end.
- Dietary swaps
Contains celery and sulphites from the wine and stock. Gluten free, dairy free, egg free and nut free as written; check the stock.
- Shopping for it
A butcher, ideally. Ask for the shanks French-trimmed if you want the bone to look clean.
- Keeping the cost down
Beef shin instead of lamb shank is a third of the price, cooks identically and is genuinely as good.
- Sustainability
Lamb's footprint per kilogram is in the same range as beef's and by some measures higher, so this is one of the heavier dishes here. The honest mitigation is not a substitution but the cut: shank is a working muscle that would otherwise be under-demanded, and cooking it takes pressure off the prime cuts of the same animal. Beef shin, suggested above for cost, is the same argument applied to a different animal.
- Nutrition
Rich, and a good deal of the fat is skimmed and discarded rather than eaten.
- Worth it?
Fifteen minutes with a saucepan at the end is what separates this from a shank sitting in brown water.
Where it comes from
- Origin
British restaurant cooking, on a technique that is broadly European.
- Also called
Braised lamb shank.
- Said out loud
Straightforward.
- What the name means
The shank is the lower part of the leg, below the knee — the hardest-working muscle and therefore the toughest and the most collagen-rich.
- History
Shank was a cheap cut for most of the twentieth century, often destined for stock or mince, and it became a restaurant staple in Britain in the 1990s as chefs pushed braising cuts. The price followed the fashion, which is a pattern that has since repeated with ox cheek, brisket and pork belly.
- Why it matters
A dinner-party dish that requires almost no skill, which is an unusual and useful combination.
- When it is eaten
Having people over, or a Sunday that wants to look like more effort than it was.
- The traditional way
Browning, then a long wet braise in a covered pot at low temperature, then reducing the liquid.
- How it changed
The low oven became a slow cooker, and the cut went from cheap to expensive.
- Regional variations
Moroccan versions use ras el hanout, dried fruit and chickpeas; Greek ones use tomato, cinnamon and orange, which this recipe borrows from.
- How this version differs
The reduction in a separate pan is stated as a required step rather than an optional one, because a slow cooker physically cannot do it and most recipes for this dish gloss over that.
- Sources and credit
None.
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