Beef Shank

We recently split a cow with some neighbors and assorted acquaintances. Our neighbor, Dan, invited us to sample some beef at his home, provided by Cami Brown, the extremely congenial mom of the clan that operates JS Angus Ranch.


Carried away by the tastiness of the various steaks she grilled up for us (and totally sucked in by her descriptions of how all the cattle are raised (without hormones, antibiotics, in a very humane way), we decided to sign up. Officially, the smallest share of a cow you can elect to purchase is one-eighth, however, we found some folks to split that with and each purchased one-sixteenth of a steer.


We picked up the meat last week. After all was tallied up and we split up our meaty booty with our neighbors, we loaded up the freezer with dry-aged, natural beef.


In addition to an assortment of the regular cuts, we were given our choice of various other bonus bits, like the heart, tongue, shanks, etc. She had mentioned that the shanks make good stock, so I spoke up for that (I also claimed a tongue -- childhood thing).


Anyway, after asking for it, I found a tasty-sounding beef shank recipe online, so, that ended up being the first beef test case for us.


If you check out the the recipe, you might note that it calls for four beef shanks, weighing about 6 ounces each.


The sawed off piece of cow leg we received weighed probably eight pounds all on its very own.

This was a problem when I attempted to flour, then brown the meat.


Even in our biggest frying pan, only one edge of the thing actually rested in the pan, allowing me to brown a spot roughly the size of a silver dollar.


I ended up pulling out the griddle, which worked okay.


The rest of the recipe turned out tasty, although I wasn't able to serve each family member their own beef shank. Pretty much, I put the huge cow leg in the middle of the table and invited all to pull off pieces.


Yummy. I wonder where Emeril gets those miniature, dinky cows?