Beef Shanks - Not just for feeding the dogs!

As some of you who are reading this know, we try to purchase all of our meat off of local farms in Greene, Delaware and Schoharie County. The meat we purchase is hormone, antibiotic free, free range and free roaming. And when we do eat beef it’s grassfed. I firmly believe that much of the disease and illness that Americans suffer from are directly attributed to the way our food tampered with before it hits that pretty plastic and Styrofoam packaging in our local grocery stores.

Our grassfed beef comes from the JJ Farber farm in Jewitt which is about 6 miles from Catskill Maison. It’s the same farm that supplies our free range eggs for our breakfasts at the Bed and Breakfast. Coincidentally the owner of the farm, Mike is also our vet in NYC and also lives in our building in Riverdale…(random right?) so we are really lucky in that we have 365 day access to really good beef. Well, knowing that I like to experiment with ingredients Mike gave me 4 beef shanks last fall stating that he had no idea what to do with them and his friend John (who runs the farm on a day to day basis) just feeds the shanks to his dogs. Hmmm, that sounds really appetizing!

Well I’ve never had beef shanks before, they were big awkward cuts of meat with a bone in the middle of the cross section, they kind of looked like oxtails or maybe short ribs but not really. But a challenge is a challenge and I’m always up for a good cooking challenge so I looked up beef shank recipes on line and came up with many stating that they are good for beef soup but not much else. Then I got a beef shank recipe from Emeril, that resembled my short rib recipe and one blog post on them stating that the marrow from them is heavenly but the shanks themselves are usually only braised in Europe and they take a long time to cook. Ok so at least people actually eat these things and it’s not just Alpo!

So I defrosted those beef shanks and threw them in my Le Creuset and braised those bad boys! 3 and a half hours later they were falling off the bone, and the marrow was like butter. (I would in the future invest in a good baguette and make a crostini). I thought they would taste like a short rib or oxtail, but no; they were leaner (so I felt less guilty) and gamier. Almost like a slightly fatty venison. After the first couple of bites I must say that my taste buds really began to like these shanks, and my father LOVED them. I served them with a mashed potato and rutabaga mix.

Beef Shanks braised in Red Wine

Ingredients:

4 cross cut beef shanks with bone in the middle 1 and a half inch thick

Seasoned flour for dredging

1 onion diced small

3 carrots diced small

3 stalks of celery diced small

3 garlic cloves diced

Olive oil

3 cups Red wine

Thyme and Bayleaf

Salt, Pepper, ground cloves, paprika

2 tablespoons of tomato paste

2 cups Chicken stock

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Heat large dutch oven and add 3 tablespoons of olive oil

Dredge meat on all sides with seasoned flour

Sear all sides of meat 3-4 minutes on each side

Remove meat from the dutch oven.

Put onion, celery, carrot in the dutch oven once meat is removed. Saute, and then add garlic, and sauté for 2 minutes. Then add 1 cup of red wine to deglaze the pan. Then add the shanks, thyme, bayleaf, seasonings, chicken stock and rest of red wine. Cover the pot and put into the oven for 2 hours. After 2 hours add the tomato paste and adjust seasonings and add a little more stock if necessary. Let braise for another hour and a half or until meat is very tender. Serve with mashed potatoes and enjoy!