Slow cooked curry lamb shanks

Heading to the farmers market on Saturday is slowly becoming a norm. Gaswork was on again and this time we got there a little earlier than the last time. I did manage to get pork racks and sausages from The Gypsy Pig. Phew! Anyway, I bought some lamb shanks (4 for $15) from Bultarra as I thought of making into some sort of curry for dinner.

Lamb shanks are really high in fat content and therefore decided against using coconut milk. Hence, this recipe is my take on a dry version of a Northern Indian lamb curry.

Bultara saltbush lamb shanks

Tomato

Ingredients:

• 4 small pieces of lamb shanks
• 1 medium onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 fresh red chillies
• 11/2 tsp of red chilli powder (more or less depending on how much heat you like)
• 2 tsp of curry powder
• 1/4 stalk of lemongrass
• 8 tomatoes
• 1 1/2 tsp of grounded coriander seeds
• 1 tsp of green pepper
• Light soya sauce
• Beef stock
• 100ml natural yoghurt

home made curry paste

Shanks in the pot

Method:

1. Blend the onion, garlic, red chillies, red chilli powder, curry powder, lemongrass, coriander, pepper, salt & light soya sauce. Taste and season accordingly
2. Deseed and roughly chop the tomatoes
3. Brown the lamb shanks in the pan. Remove the browned lamb shanks and drain out the excess oil
4. Dry fry the blended mixture. Add the lamb shanks back to the pan and stir it through the mixture
5. Stir in the tomatoes
6. Tip mixture into the slow cooker and add 500ml of beef stock. Leave it on high for 3 hours and turn it down to low until ready to serve
7. Separate the shanks from the gravy. I sieved the gravy and used the sediments and 1/2 the liquid to make the sauce
8. Put 100ml yoghurt into a bowl. Mix 1 tbsp of sauce into the yoghurt. Keep doing that till yoghurt is warm and then mix all the sauce in. Stir through and season accordingly.
9. Coat the shanks with the finished sauce. Sprinkle chopped coriander and serve.

Shanks cooked

Flat/naan bread

Thanks to Mr. H, we had homemade naan to mop up the sauce. The meat was really tender and falling off the bone. I have to give credit to the lovely pieces of shanks from Bultarra.

clean bone

Good produce really makes cooking so much easier and taste so much better. Clean bone and plate says it all!