Lib Holler's Lamb Shanks
(March 31, 2002 Easter Dinner)
This economical and tasty recipe gives a new dimension to lamb.
Ingredients:
2 Lamb Shanks
2 T cider vinegar
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp lemon-pepper marinade (we don't know what this was, so we used lemon juice and pepper. Worked fine!)
2 T bacon drippings or corn oil (4 slices of Oscar Myer in microwave worked fine)
1 T all-purpose flour
1/2 C port or 4 tsps cider vinegar (we used a cup of cheap champagne, left over from mimosas)
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1/8 tsp ground thyme
1/4 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried green onion or chives (we used a whole bunch of fresh chives because we didn't want to spend $4 for a whole bottle of dried!)
1 T soy sauce
1 C beef or chicken bouillon
Preparation:
Trim lamb of excess fat and wipe with 2 Ts of vinegar. Sprinkle with salt and lemon-pepper marinade (again, we rubbed lemon juice and sprinkled with salt and pepper) and brown quickly in bacon drippings in a hot skillet over medium-high heat. Turn on all sides; sprinkle with flour and pour wine (or champagne) over meat. Add remaining ingredients. Cover skillet with a tight-fitting lid and simmer slowly for 2 hours. Baste occasionally (we set the timer for every 15 minutes.) The meat juices form a delicious gravy. Add a small amount of hot water if needed to stretch gravy. Serve with saffron rice or boiled potatoes. For a complete meal with only 1 skillet to wash, the last hour of cooking add 2 peeled potatoes, 4 scraped carrots left whole, and 3 medium-sized white onions with skin removed. Yield: 2 servings.
-Note: We found that only 1 hour to cook the vegetables wasn't nearly enough time with the amount of sauce made from the shanks, so we'd recommend putting the vegetables in at the very beginning of the two-hour cooking period.


