French Onion-Braised Lamb Shanks With Barley and Greens
Published Feb. 23, 2022
- Total Time
- About 4 hours
- Rating
- Comments
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Ingredients
- 3½ to 4pounds lamb shanks (about 4 large or 5 to 6 small or medium)
- Salt and black pepper
- 2tablespoons neutral oil, such as canola, vegetable or rice bran
- 3pounds yellow onions, thinly sliced (see Tip)
- 1pound leeks (about 2 large), white and pale green parts only, cut into 2- to 3-inch segments, then thinly sliced lengthwise (see Tip)
- 1medium carrot (about 6 ounces), peeled and finely diced
- 8garlic cloves, smashed and roughly chopped
- ¼cup tomato paste
- 2cups dry red wine
- 6cups chicken stock, preferably homemade (see Tip)
- 4rosemary sprigs
- 1cup pearled barley
- 1bunch mature spinach or kale (remove the stems if using kale), roughly chopped
Preparation
- Step 1
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 275 degrees. Lightly season lamb with salt and pepper on all sides. Heat the oil in a 7- to 8-quart Dutch oven over medium-high until shimmering. Add the lamb shanks and cook, turning occasionally, until well-browned on all sides, about 10 minutes total. Transfer the lamb to a rimmed baking sheet or large plate, and set aside.
- Step 2
Add the onions, leeks and carrots to the Dutch oven. Reduce heat to medium. Season lightly with salt and cook, stirring frequently and scraping the bottom of the Dutch oven with a wooden spoon, until the onions and leeks are as caramelized as you’d like, about 20 minutes for lightly caramelized onions that give the stew a more savory flavor, or 45 minutes or longer for deeply caramelized onions that will make the stew sweeter. If browned bits start building up on the bottom of the pot, add water a tablespoon at a time, scraping them up and reincorporating them before continuing.
- Step 3
When the onions are ready, add the garlic, and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and stir until it evenly coats all of the vegetables. Add the wine, scrape the bottom and sides of the pot, and cook until the wine is reduced by at least half, a minute or two. Add the chicken stock and the rosemary. (Tie the rosemary into a bundle with kitchen twine if you want to make it easier on yourself later.)
- Step 4
Return the lamb shanks to the pot. Increase heat to high, bring the pot to a simmer, and transfer to the oven. Place a lid on top, leaving it cracked by an inch or so. Cook for 2½ hours, then remove from oven. Flip the lamb, and stir the barley and spinach into the broth, making sure it’s all submerged. Return to the oven, cover with the lid cracked, and continue cooking until a metal skewer inserted into the lamb meets very little resistance, the meat falls off the bone with a little tug, and the barley is fully cooked but still chewy, 30 to 45 minutes longer.
- Step 5
Transfer the pot to the stovetop, remove and discard the rosemary, and adjust the consistency to a saucy, stewlike mixture by simmering to thicken, or thin it out by adding water. Stirring as you go to prevent the bottom from sticking. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve.
- When slicing the onions, remove the stem and root end, then split the onion from pole to pole. Remove the skin, then lay each half flat on your cutting board and slice them from pole to pole (to form slivers as opposed to half rings). Onions cut this way will melt into the stew more easily.
- Leeks can often have sandy soil trapped between their layers. To clean them, trim and discard the root end, then cut off the dark green tops (they can be discarded or added to the pot the next time you make stock). Cut the white/pale green stalk into 2- to 3-inch sections, then split each section in half lengthwise. Run the sections under cool water, gently separating the layers with your fingers to rinse out any grit. Once clean, slice each section lengthwise into thin slivers.
- This dish works best with a rich, homemade chicken stock, the kind that sets into a gel when refrigerated. If using a thinner stock or store-bought stock, pour the stock into a bowl and sprinkle the surface with ¼ cup powdered gelatin. Let it sit until the gelatin is fully hydrated, then use as directed in the recipe.
- This stew can be made in advance and refrigerated for several days. It can be reheated gently in a covered saucepan or Dutch oven on the stovetop, adding water as necessary to adjust the consistency.
Private Notes
Comments
Buy your meat at the butcher and ask to “crack” the shanks. The butcher will slice through the bone, but leave the ligament attached. The result is the marrow now cooks into the stew and develops the rich flavors unique to lamb shanks.
The lamb shanks I get all give off a great deal of fat as they cook. So I would skim off fat from the top of the liquid before serving, or better yet, remove the lamb from the finished dish, chill the sauce/barley/greens separately from the lamb, and remove excess fat once the sauce is cold. Then recombine the two parts the next day to reheat.
Very nice recipe. Interestingly, India's Parsis prepare lamb/mutton similarly, browning loads of onion at the start, then browning the meat. But they typically follow up with pressure cooking - an Instant Pot will shorten Step 4 to 40 minutes. Not sure about the need for dry red wine. Dry (brut) is a fancy term for "not sweet": cheap wines often use sugar to mask immaturity/impurities. This recipe, however, benefits from mild sweetness, so even a Trader Joe's "3-buck Chuck" would work.
This was overall great. Only change I made was to use half chicken stock and half beef stock (there was only one container of chicken stock at my grocery store from the more “gelatinous” brand). Start to finish it took about 6 hours. I was moving slow, but the onions took about 30-40 minutes to get to the lighter cooked stage and the barley took over an hour of cooking. The lamb took about 3 hours of cooking to get tender, but my shanks were huge. Only change I would make is either use less rosemary or use thyme/marjoram instead. I used about 3.5 sprigs of oldish rosemary I had in my fridge, but it still overwhelmed the final product a little bit.
Made this for Christmas eve dinner and it was a huge hit. I used store bought broth with added gelatin. I salted the lamb shanks about 1 hr before cooking and browned them in oil, letting them get really dark, then I drained the oil/ fat from the pan and continued with the recipe. I did not add the carrots until the tomato paste step because I was worried it would interfere with carmelizing the onions. I used a cheap ($3) cab for the red wine and it still came out delicious. I thickened the broth at the end with some corn starch to make a gravy to go over mashed potatoes. Next time I would make the caramelized leek/ onions in the slow cooker the day before so I dont have to stand at the stove for an hour. Overall this was a high quality meal without being too fussy.
I wasn’t a big fan of this. Caramelized onions wine = too much sweetness for me