Lamb Shanks & Mashed Potatoes

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LambShank3Don’t worry about Summer being over… be ‘Shankful’ it’s Fall! …. OK, that was pretty corny, but as it’s sad that the long warm days of Summer are getting shorter and cooler there is a silver lining… now it’s the season for delicious slow cooked comfort foods.

Lamb shanks are one of our favourites to make this time of year. They are an easy dish to prepare and result in a rich delicious meal. The method we use has minimal prep, a slow roast to start then a few hours of braising. There are so many flavour combinations you can use with lamb shanks – just ask Google and you’ll see. For our recipe we used an adaptation of a recipe we found on Cooks Illustrated (Braised Lamb Shanks with North African Spices). Here’s how we did ours…

Two Step Cooking Method:

  1. Roast…. Salt & pepper shanks then place in Dutch oven and slow roast low temp (325 degrees) with the lid off for about a ½ hour
  2. Braise… Take shanks out of pot, set aside. On stove, add a bit of oil to Dutch oven, sweat onions and garlic (or whatever you like), add broth, wine, tomato sauce, any spices you like (we used our own Moroccan Dry Rub instead of the Ras al Hanout that CI used). Bring to a boil for a couple minutes to mix ingredients. Put lamb shanks back in, cover and cook at 275 degrees for 2-3 hours or until the meat pulls away from the bone.

Ingredients:

The ingredients we use are all approximate and added to taste. I think that you really can’t go wrong when adding whatever appeals to you – here’s the gist of what we used:

4 lamb shanks
3 Cups broth (we generally use whatever is in the freezer – this time we used chicken broth as that’s what we had)
1 C Tomato sauce
½ C White Wine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion – finely chopped
2 cloves garlic – finely chopped
2 tbsp MMJ Moroccan Dry Rub
S&P

This time we served it with mashed potatoes, some corn we had in the freezer from earlier this summer and a sprinkle of parsley. Delish!!

Frenched Pork Rib Roast

Mmmmm Sunday night dinner – always brings back memories of when I was as a kid and mom would make something special to bring all the family together. Such a treat. This Sunday we tried a cut that we have not had in a long long time. A frenched pork rib roast from Stonaleen Farm with a mustard garlic rub. Well I must say – it was divine and we will be adding it to our product list so others can enjoy it too!

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Here’s how we did ours…

  • Preheat oven to 425 degrees
  • Apply mustard rub to roast – ingredients below but you can put on any type of seasoning that suits your fancy
  • Throw a bunch of veggies around roast in pan (we used chunks of onion, carrots and blue potatoes)
  • Pop er in the oven for 10 minutes then turn down over to 325 degrees
  • Cook for approx 1 ½ hours or until thermometer read 145 degrees *
  • Let set 20-30 minutes – while you make anything else you want to serve with it
  • Enjoy

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Note: *we take ours out when the internal temperature is a bit lower than what some recommend – this is because we let it set for at least 20-30 minutes and the roast continues to cook.

Mustard Garlic Rub:
2 tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 ½ tsp Herbes de Provence
1 Tbsp Chopped garlic
Squirt or two of Olive Oil