How do I cook lamb shanks so they fall off the bone?

The shank is the lower foreleg or hind leg: one heavily worked muscle wrapped around a bone that is full of gelatine-rich connective tissue. Nothing on the animal responds better to a long wet cook, and nothing is less forgiving of being served an hour early.

What you'll need

• Lamb shanks, one per person
• A lidded casserole or a deep tin and foil
• Stock, wine or a mixture
• Onion, carrot, celery, garlic, herbs

Step by step

1. Dry them and brown them properly.Pat each shank dry, salt it, and brown it in a hot pan in a little oil until every surface is deeply coloured, not just tanned. Do them one or two at a time so the pan stays hot. This is fifteen minutes that supplies most of the finished flavour, and it cannot be recovered later.
2. Build the base in the same pan.Soften a rough dice of onion, carrot and celery in the fat, add garlic and tomato purée for a minute, then deglaze with wine or stock and scrape every brown fragment off the bottom. That fond is the sauce.
3. Part-submerge, do not drown.Sit the shanks in the pot and add liquid to come roughly two-thirds up them. The exposed part roasts and keeps colour; fully covered meat boils and tastes washed out. Add a bay leaf, thyme or rosemary, and a strip of lemon peel if you want to lift it.
4. Cook covered and low.Lid on, 150–160°C, for 2½–3½ hours. You want an occasional lazy bubble, never a rolling boil — a hard simmer squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you meat that is simultaneously falling apart and dry. Turn the shanks once halfway so the exposed side changes.
5. Test with a fork, not a clock.Push a fork into the thickest part and twist. Done means it separates with almost no pressure and the meat has visibly shrunk back up the bone. If it resists, put the lid back and give it another 30 minutes. Then check again. This is not a cut you can rush.
6. Rest the shanks and finish the sauce.Lift the shanks out and keep them warm. Skim the fat off the braising liquid — it will be considerable — then reduce it hard on the hob until it coats a spoon. Strain it if you want it smooth. Pour it back over the shanks.

Tips

• Shanks are better made the day before. Cool them in the liquid, chill, lift the set fat off the top, and reheat gently. The flavour deepens and the fat removal becomes trivial.
• If the meat is falling off but the sauce is thin, that is normal — you finish the sauce separately by reduction after the meat comes out.
• Hind shanks are larger and meatier than fore shanks and take longer. If they came from the butcher, ask which you have.
• Ask the butcher to French the bone end — scrape the top clean — if you want the tall upright presentation. It changes nothing about the cooking.

Common mistakes

• Skipping the browning to save time — The braise itself contributes almost no roasted flavour. Everything savoury and deep in a finished shank came from that first fifteen minutes.
• Covering the shanks completely with liquid — You end up with boiled lamb and a diluted sauce. Two-thirds up is the level that gives you both braised meat and a concentrated liquid.
• Taking them out at the recipe's stated time — Shanks vary hugely in size. The fork test is the only reliable signal, and thirty more minutes is almost always the right answer to a shank that resists.

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