STEVE BAIN says preparing lamb shanks is just a matter of having the right tools — and a tray big enough to cook them in.
This is one butcher-to-cooking scenario where the butcher influences the kitchen. That is, if you don’t have a meat saw, then you may prefer to send full-length lamb shanks into the kitchen.
The objective here is to separate a lamb shank from a ‘full’ leg. You’ll end up with one shank and one roast from each leg.
Step 1: Start with a pair of legs, a butcher’s knife and honing steel.
Step 2: This allows us to fast track one leg so we can visualise what we want to achieve with our end product.
Step 3: The knife point indicates the tip of the knee (think patella).
Step 4: Now move the knife about 3cm further along (towards the ‘hip’) and cut down between the shank bone and the upper-leg bone (i.e. cut through the joint. There will be a bit of cartilage in here — you can either cut around it or through it, your choice).
Step 5: The same cut, at a different angle.
Step 6: Yet again, another view of the cut through the ‘knee’ joint.
Step 7: Now cut all the way through to sever the shank from the leg roast.
Step 8: Now remove the ‘ankle tendon’.
Step 9: Cut at the ‘calf-muscle’ end of the tendon.
Step 10: With the tendon cut at one end, move the knife to the other end of the tendon.
Step 11: Cut through to sever the tendon.
Step 12: A close-up of the final tendon cut.
Step 13: The tendon removed from the leg shank.
Step 14: Make sure you have a baking dish that is big enough to place the shanks in. You may have to place them diagonally, one per ‘tray’, and have multiple trays in the oven.