you've seen a lamb shank, now look at my beef shank!

[jacklondon]

Hey - Its been raining since october last year in London, and i've been long waiting for some KK favourable weather to come along.... but Ive given up waiting!

So for the inaugural burn of the season I wanted to go big - I couldn't fit the pyrenean mountain lamb in the cage (they suffer from rigamortis, so you can't bend them around like a little piggy), and then I saw the Adam Perry Lang recipe for a beef shank. He rather eloquently describes it as "something you might see Fred Flintstone feeding Captain Caveman". he's right - its massive, i put the can of tomatoes there to give you some scale.....

So, what you've got here is the bare meat, before marinade. I've got to take the silverskin off otherwise the marinade won't penetrate, worse, apparently the joint will loose its shape if you don't take it off - rather like monkfish membrane I guess.

The marinade will be deployed this evening, it will be going on for 7 to 8 hours at midday tomorrow so that we can serve as Chelsea start the deconstruction of Bayern Munich in the Champions League final...

I'll keep you updated with progress

[kad1979]

Nice looking piece of meat...I can't wait to see an after picture. What temp will you be cooking it at?

[Loquitur]

That is too cool!!! I don't think I've ever seen a whole one for sale like that in my neck of the woods though I do occasionally see a two inch or so section cut across the bone for soup or stew. Can't wait to see the finished pix!!

[jacklondon]

135 degrees - 235 for you guys.
it takes a 4 hour blast then it gets wrapped in foil with a load of other ingredients (honey amongst them) to keep it moist. It gets another 2 hours wrapped, then a rest for an hour, then another 30 mins at the end to get some "burnt" qualities. sounds like training for the olympics!!!
its a pretty involved process, but I'm pretty optimistic that the quality of the meat, the quality of the recipe and the quality of the equipment will disguise any of my own shortcomings.
I've done a few APL (Adam Perry Lang) recipes recently, the fajita skirt steak is enough to make a grown man cry - the book "serious barbecue" is one of the few books out there with instructions for ceramic BBQ's, so worth a look.
On another note, I've been playing around with other "smokes" - green tea, rice, sugar, cinnamon and star anise specifically - amazing results, but only for small cuts of meat, fish fillets and poultry.... I feel like heston blumenthal but instead of the sous vide i've got a KK!!

[jacklondon]

massive, massive disappointment.

We followed the recipe to the line. I was suspicious that it didn't seem to be "softening" as the cooking went on, i was right to be suspicious - it was as tough as old boots.

the theory was that all the sinews would melt into a gooey mushy meaty mess - but no....

however - Chelsea won the cup which made up for it!

JL

[Syzygies]

I didn't say anything, not wanting to jinx your cook, but I've bought beef shank for stew. Specifically, for Robert Delf's Sichuan braised beef noodles, if anyone remembers that book. His Dan Dan noodles rock, using the leftover broth. I combine the two recipes.

Even with a many hour wet braise, there simply isn't enough articulation of the flesh, enough dissolvable non-protein interwoven with the flesh, to make the kind of braise one dreams of. Barbecuing adds wonderful elements that a wet braise misses, but I've never seen barbecue perform miracles that were impossible using braise techniques.

The Dan Dan noodles were in fact quite tasty, but using this cut is a missed opportunity, unless you're either poor and someone gave you the meat, or you broke down the side of beef and believe in using everything. Not to be harsh, just saying...

I have long dreamed of roasting a beef clod, the 20+ lb answer to the question "you think that's a shoulder? How small was that animal, whatever it was?" Yet I never do, tomorrow will be lamb shoulder.

[jacklondon]

I'm a braise kind of guy too, so familiar with the various "favourable" cuts you cat get and what to expect.

truth be known, i was pretty confident that it would behave rather like a slow roast pork shoulder..... alas no!

anyway - it doesn't matter, its in the past! and now you can all save yourselves the expense, disappointment and indignity of trying this approach!!

I'm going to start using more tandoor type recipes this summer - might ask clever dennis if he could design a little insert to help!

JB

[Loquitur]

I would love to do tandoor type recipes too. Please don't forget to report back and post pix.

[jacklondon]

i have this mega cookery book, imaginatively called "tandoor" its out of print, and cost a couple of hundred dollars but has abut 100 variations on chicken tikka and pretty much any other idea you can imagine.... the best so far has been venison, my local butcher - Glen Thomas in Lindfield - supplied some amazingly gorgeous and lean tikka (tikka refers to the bite size morsel of food, not the marinade or the cooking style).... the recipe was primarily natural yoghurt and chilli as a second marinade, the first being ginger, garlic and vinegar.... never any oil in these marinades.
i put them on skewers and balanced them over the firebox (didn't want grill contact - this is what i want dennis to design...). really, really good.

[Loquitur]

I use wide metal skewers for kebobs and rest them on the handles of the charcoal basket with no grill underneath. Is that the same as you were doing? Works great!!

[Syzygies]

i have this mega cookery book, imaginatively called "tandoor" its out of print, and cost a couple of hundred dollars but has abut 100 variations on chicken tikka and pretty much any other idea you can imagine....

Tandoor by Ranjit Rai
Great book, I have it.