Recipes

Osso buco's lamb cousin, with soft polenta doing the catching

The Milanese figured out long ago that a shin braised on the bone in tomato makes a sauce nothing else can — the marrow sees to that. This is the same idea run through the lamb paddock: shanks browned hard, then braised low with tomato, white wine and rosemary until the meat leans off the bone, all of it served over a pool of soft, buttery parmesan polenta whose entire purpose in life is catching sauce. It's a Sunday sort of pot that happily cooks on a Tuesday, and the polenta takes less minding than most people fear.

Red-braising the shank until it's lacquered, glossy and falling off the bone

Chinese red-braising is one of the great slow-cooking techniques, and it takes to lamb shanks like they were made for it. Soy, Shaoxing wine, rock sugar, star anise and wide strips of orange peel go into the pot, the shanks braise low for a few hours, then the liquid gets boiled down hard into a dark, sticky glaze you spoon back over the meat. The reward is a shank that's tender all the way through and shining like it's been varnished. It's a bit of a project and needs a couple of pantry stops, but the stove does the real work while the smell takes over the house.

A pantry raid tonight, a pasta sauce tomorrow

Every ingredient in this one is either in your pantry right now or lasts for months in it — a bottle of passata, dried herbs, an onion, a spoon of sugar. The shanks go in raw, the sauce goes over the top, and eight hours later you've got lamb sliding off the bone in a rich tomato sugo that tastes like it simmered on an Italian nonna's stove all day. Which, in a way, it did. The bonus round: whatever sauce is left becomes tomorrow night's pasta dinner, and it might be the better meal of the two.

Eight untouched hours between you and the best gravy in the house

Some dinners want your attention. This one wants you to leave the house. Two grass-fed lamb shanks go into the slow cooker in the morning with an onion, a couple of carrots and a proper gravy base — no packets, no browning, nothing fussed over — and by six o'clock the meat is waving at the bone and the kitchen smells like a Sunday. Ten minutes of gravy-thickening at the end is the only job left, and mash is not optional. This is the dinner the slow cooker was invented for.

Kashmir's great lamb curry, built on the bone for a sauce with real depth

Rogan josh is usually made with diced lamb, and it's lovely that way. But put whole shanks in the pot instead and something better happens — the bone and marrow give the sauce a body and richness that cubes of meat can't reach, and the meat comes out spoon-tender. This is a proper spice-drawer project: whole spices bloomed in ghee, onions cooked down slow, yoghurt whisked in a spoon at a time, then a long, quiet braise while the kitchen fills with cardamom and clove. Two shanks, a good afternoon, and a curry that tastes like you know what you're doing. You will by the end.

The bistro dish that made shanks famous, back in your own kitchen

There was a time when butchers practically gave shanks away. Then some clever cook braised one in red wine until the meat slumped off the bone into a glossy, wine-dark sauce, put it on a bistro menu, and the secret was out for good. This is that dish — a proper sear, a soffritto, half a bottle of red and two and a half unhurried hours in a low oven. It asks for twenty minutes of real work and repays you with the kind of dinner people order at restaurants because they assume they can't make it at home. They can.

One pot, a raid on the spice drawer, and couscous to catch every drop

This is tagine cooking without the tagine — lamb shanks simmered in one pot with cinnamon, cumin, a spoon of honey and a tin of chickpeas until the meat gives up and the sauce turns into something you'd happily eat on its own. That's the quiet genius of the chickpeas: they drink up the spiced, marrow-rich braising liquid and become half the meal. Twenty minutes of proper cooking at the stove, then the pot minds itself while the kitchen fills with the sort of smell that brings people wandering in asking how long.

The bandit's dinner — sealed in paper with lemon and oregano, opened at the table

Kleftiko is named for the klephts, the old Greek mountain bandits who cooked stolen lamb in sealed pits so no smoke would give them away. The modern version keeps the secret-keeping trick: each shank is bundled up with potatoes, garlic, lemon and oregano in a tight parcel of paper and foil, then slow-roasted so nothing escapes. Everything steams and roasts in its own juices, and the parcel isn't opened until it hits the table — a little cloud of lemony, herby steam, and a shank that's collapsed off the bone into the potatoes below. It's a bit of theatre and almost no washing up. Hard to beat.

The shanks make the broth, then become the soup — two jobs, one pot

Some soups you build on a stock cube. This one builds its own. Two lamb shanks go into the pot with the vegetables and simmer away for a couple of hours, the bones and marrow turning plain water into a broth with real backbone. Then you lift the shanks out, shred the meat that's fallen off the bone, and stir it back through — and suddenly a humble winter soup is one of the most satisfying dinners in the repertoire. It's mostly hands-off, it feeds four with bread on the side, and it's the sort of pot you're glad to find leftovers of the next day.