ye olde tymey tuesday – i make lamb. yes, lamb.

so here’s the deal: i love lamb shanks.  i guess you could say shanks in general are pretty legit (i had a few bites of hugh’s goat shank at a tendejon de la calle dinner and o..m..g..) but lamb shank is where its at.  not many people like lamb which i totally understand because it definitely has a distinct lamb-ish sorta flavor and truth be told i’m a little shocked i like it myself.  contrary to what my rib-making post might have lead you to believe i’m not that huge a carnivore and lamb definitely walks that fine line of being just too much, well, meat.

i’ve attempted lamb once in my life when i made shoulder a couple easters ago.  it turned out pretty nice, but, no one really wants to eat it (of course i had many other mains on the menu) so after that experiment i just settled into letting lamb remain this thing that i only get while dining out.  i’m a very predictable formula when ordering at a restaurant – first choice: any fruit and meat combo unless veal, marrow or fois gras is involved.  second choice: lamb shank.  third choice: ask the server which of the fish dishes is best unless morels are involved in which case there’s no need to ask because obvi you get whatever has the morels.  see?  now that you know how its done i’ll let you do the ordering for me.

anywho i wasn’t quite done with the year ’round meat recipes cookbook (maybe i am turning into a carnivore?) so i chose onion lamb shanks from the section titled “favored family fare”.  partly because the idea of tackling a lamb shank sounded like fun and partly because the idea of eating a lamb shank sounded like fun but mostly because i’ve had this random package of dried onion soup mix in my cupboard for a couple years.  lets do it.

favored family fare!

recipe and results after the jump.

ONION LAMB SHANKS

4 lamb shanks
3 tablespoons lard or drippings
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups water
1 package (1 1/2 ounces) dehydrated onion soup
1/4 cup flour

Brown shanks on all sides in lard or drippings. Pour off drippings. Season shanks with pepper. Combine water and onion soup mix. Pour mixture over the shanks. Cover tightly and simmer 2 1/2 hours or until tender. Remove shanks from pan. Mix flour with a small amount of water and add to cooking liquid. Cook, stirring constantly until thickened. Serve gravy with shanks. 4 servings.

firstly, my plan was to make one shank but keep everything else the same (i.e. end up with the same amount of gravy) and also to use olive oil instead of lard or drippings.  i might be unemployed (i.e. trying to pinch pennies with loads of time on my hands) but i haven’t started saving lard yet.  thats sooo un-ye-olde-tymey of me, i know.  maybe next time i get all meat-o-riffic i’ll save some.  maybe.

secondly, i just now noticed while typing the recipe that the soup mix was supposed to be 1 1/2 ounces.  a quick google revealed the soup mix i used was 1 ounce.  its not a big deal but geez i keep noticing things way after the fact when i start typing.  i need to get with the program.

i set off to buy a lamb shank and of course mollie stones was sold out so i hopped on the bus up to bryan’s in laurel village.  i’m so, so glad i went there.  yes its spendy but it has such a lovely meat and fish counter.  (think whole foods but not as corporate.  yeah, rad.)  i told the butcher i needed one lamb shank and he said okay and asked if i wanted it cut.  ahh panic attack!  i have no idea what he’s talking about!  i said ‘well, uhh, is that what people normally do?’  he was so friendly and helpful and asked me if i was just going to braise it (i nodded yes while thinking, wait, is that what i’m doing?  i can’t remember!  why do i always feel like an idiot at the meat market?!) and then showed me where he’d cut it in two places to basically shorten it up and do something else i’m not sure what but he was the expert so sure why not.  he hooked me up and then before he wrapped it up showed me the shorter part and said that there was no meat on it but it would help thicken the gravy.  (lesson i never would have learned at mollie stones.)  so i’m having a mini love affair with bryan’s and then i see the package and my ocd dreams were coming true:

on to glory!

here’s the lamb all raw.  the part on the top is what he cut off but said to keep for the gravy and the part below has the second cut midway through the middle.  i will confess that at this point i kind of got grossed out a little bit:

hi. thats lamb on my counter.

i browned the part with the meat on it:

at this point i'm feeling less grossed out and more annoyed that i don't have any root vegetables to mash up.

then added its shanky counterpart and soup mix:

thicken that gravy, yo.

i let it simmer for 2 hours and decided it was done.  then i decided to let it simmer for another 15 just to be safe while i cooked up some egg noodles (which was all i could come up with since i didn’t plan ahead to do a mash of sorts):

a whole lotta lamb

then added the flour just like it said which went surprisingly smoothly (pun intended) and served it up:

zero attempt at food styling btw

unfortunately my pictures don’t do it complete justice because it was fairly tasty and i’ll tell you why: sodium.  remember when i used 1 ounce of soup mix and it called for 1.5?  i love me some salt, but woah boyeee.  that second cut in the lamb separated it in two after all the cooking so maybe it was to make it into smaller servings?  it was a ton of meat and i didn’t eat it all.  i hate to admit it but i was a little icked out.  it was good but it wasn’t good.  and was it too lamby because i’d been with it from start to finish?  or was it too lamby because i only love lamb when its done so, so right?  i’m not sure.  it was definitely one of the best ye olde tymey dishes yet and i’m definitely leaving lamb to the pros.

and i’m definitely making one more recipe from this meat filled cookbook.  until next week…

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