007/18 – Smoked Pork Shank Osso Buco:
I am still slowly emptying the freezer before I buy anymore meat! The next largest cut of meat waiting to be cooked was the shank off the Pork Shoulder I cut up last month. I had a look through my cook list for pork shank and spotted Smoked Pork Shank Osso Buco in Pitmaster by Andy Husbands and Chris Hart. It looked fantastic, decision made!
The Meat:
I discuss Pannage Pork in more detail in this post:
The shank was cut from this shoulder I received:
The Prep:
Pretty simple. I set the smoker up to run at 275f by dropping a bag of heat beads in the base, pushing them to the sides to create a space in the middle then pouring half a lit chimney of lumpwood on top. A fairly short cook planned so I just filled half a bucket for the water pan. I left the smoker to settle at 275f and removed the skin, fat and silver skin from the shank. I used a new Victorinox boning knife for this and it made the job very easy! Once trimmed I applied a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper, patting it in to the meat for good measure.
The Cook:
The shank went on to the smoker and I added a couple of chunks of Hickory from Smokewood Shack. The recipe says to leave it 2 hours so whilst it was cooking I made the braising liquid by heating oil and garlic then adding chilli flakes, onion, celery and carrot. After a few minutes I added fennel seeds, bottle of red wine and chicken stock. The heat was set to high and the mixture was boiled for around 10 minutes until the liquid reduced by a third.
After 2 hours the pork shank was looking pretty good so I placed it into the braising liquid and added rosemary, thyme and bay leaves then covered the pan with tin foil. I left it in the smoker for another 2 hours.
With half an hour to go I made the Mascarpone Polenta and when that was ready the meat was at 95c internal temperature so I served up.
Time to Eat:
Polenta in the middle, Pork Shank chunks on top then braising liquid poured over the meat. Lovely!
Summary:
I really enjoyed this cook, it looks like it should have taken a lot of work but it was really quite simple with minimal intervention required. Nice way to use up the Pork Shank and although I have eaten Polenta a fair bit in the past I don’t actually remember cooking it before!
The meat had a great taste, the combination of the meat, smoke and the braising liquid worked really well together.
| Cook Difficulty: | 2/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Short: 2/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Weber Smokey Mountain |
| Cook Method: | Smoker |
| Charcoal: | Heat Beads – 1 bag |
| Smoking Wood: | Smokewood Shack Hickory |
| Cook temperature: | 275f |
| Cook time: | 2 hours smoked / 2 hours braised |
| Internal temperature: | 95c |
| Notes: | No major changes. |