Stews are so much easier when you use the oven to brown the protein! A meal prep you can walk away from, no babysitting required.
Time: 4/5
I’m trading time for low-effort “searing” in the oven.
Effort: 3/5
Patience is a skill as well as a virtue.
Praise Passivity
Jump to RecipeAs the weather turns cold, I look forward to having a warm and comforting meal to sit down to. Stews and braises are great for meal prep because you can make a lot of food at a time.
I especially love to meal prep with my vacuum pot: it lets me hold a pot of food at a simmering temperature by keeping it in a very well insulated container after I bring it to a boil on the stovetop. As an added bonus, the pot is dishwasher safe so it’s even less work on the cleanup.
The vacuum pot is truly passive cooking that you can walk away from, which I have taken advantage of when making Hungarian Goulash, Beef and Guinness Stew, Pork Adobo, Bak Kut Teh, as well as Cantonese classics like “Lo Sui” master stock braised beef shanks and “Swiss” chicken wings (which have nothing to do with Switzerland). Of course, all these recipes can be done all the way on the stovetop. But the equipment saves on gas and makes life easier.
But stews and braises are only low effort if you don’t count the work that goes into browning the meat and washing the pan afterwards. Fortunately, sheet pans covered in aluminium foil need no cleaning up at all, and the oven is perfectly able to brown meat if you give it enough time.
Which brings me to this week’s experiment. “Searing” the meat in the oven then simmering in the vacuum pot lets me turn most of the recipe into a passive process. This powerful one-two combo lets me take advantage of a lazy weekend to sort out the meals for the coming week.
As an added bonus, all the drippings in the pan are fantastic for roasting vegetables while the protein is being simmered! I used cauliflower which was perfect – all the little nooks and crannies held onto the lamb fat, and they very nearly stole the show.
Time for effort is a trade off I will happily make, especially if the process is so passive that I can get chores done at the same time, or even leave the house while the vacuum pot works its magic. This turned out so well that I look forward to doing something similar again.
Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0
Dramatis Personae
Served 7
- 4lb bone-in lamb shanks
- 2 heads of cauliflower
- 2 large carrots
- 1 onion
- 500ml tomato purée
- 1 tbsp Better Than Bouillon low sodium beef base
- Mixed dried herbs, black pepper and salt to taste
- 175ml red wine
Executive summary
- Place lamb shanks and onion wedges on a baking sheet lined with foil and parchment paper. Season with pepper, and brown them in the oven at 200C/400F.
- When the shanks and onions are brown on one side (around 30 minutes), turn them and brown the other side for another 30 minutes or so.
- Meanwhile, bring red wine, Better Than Bouillon, bay leaves and dried herbs to a boil in a pot.
- Once shanks and onions are browned, add them to the vacuum pot. Add enough water to mostly cover the food.
- Cover the pot and simmer for 2-3 hours, or until shanks are almost tender.
- About 45 minutes before serving, wash and cut the cauliflower. Toss in the pan drippings and roast in the oven at 200C/400F for about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, peel and cut the carrots into chunks and add to the simmering pot.
- Once the shanks and carrots are tender, taste for seasoning and serve hot.
Play by Play
First things first. It can take an hour or more to brown the shanks, so I’m beginning with that. The onions fit nicely into the remaining empty space, so let’s get some char on them too.
I can do my knife work and start working on the red wine sauce at a leisurely pace.
Once the shanks and onions are browned, they can go into the sauce. Bring it to a rolling boil, then stick the pot into the vacuum shell. Here is when I walked away to do some chores and ran some errands.
It’s been about 2 hours, and the shanks are almost done. My carrots go in now, and if I was using potatoes this is where they would go in too.
The time it takes the carrots to cook is roughly the same time it takes to roast the cauliflower in the lamb shank’s drippings. Toss them well and stick them into the oven.
The carrots gave off more water than I expected, so as a finishing touch I reduced the sauce further. I removed the shanks first to make it easier to judge the consistency of the sauce, and to make it easier to stir and keep things from burning to the bottom.
And all that’s left to do is plate up and eat! I had plenty of time to make some rice while the shanks were simmering, which was a great way to soak up all the beautiful red wine sauce.
Low Effort Lamb Shank Stew for Meal Prep
Ingredients
- 4 lb bone-in lamb shanks
- 2 heads cauliflower
- 2 large carrots
- 1 onion
- 175 ml red wine
- 500 ml tomato purée
- 1 tbsp Better Than Bouillon low sodium beef base
- to taste Mixed dried herbs
- to taste black pepper and salt
Instructions
- Place lamb shanks and onion wedges on a baking sheet lined with foil and parchment paper. Season with pepper, and brown them in the oven at 200C/400F.
- When the shanks and onions are brown on one side (around 30 minutes), turn them and brown the other side for another 30 minutes or so.
- Meanwhile, bring red wine, Better Than Bouillon, bay leaves and dried herbs to a boil in a pot.
- Once shanks and onions are browned, add them to the vacuum pot. Add enough water to mostly cover the food.
- Cover the pot and simmer for 2-3 hours, or until shanks are almost tender.
- About 45 minutes before serving, wash and cut the cauliflower. Toss in the pan drippings and roast in the oven at 200C/400F for about 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, peel and cut the carrots into chunks and add to the simmering pot.
- Once the shanks and carrots are tender, taste for seasoning and serve hot.
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2 responses to “Low Effort Lamb Shank Stew for Meal Prep”
This is great. I love when you do “easy” ones! I’m curious however: what would you consider the US equivalent of a vacuum pot? Would an electric pressure cooker or InstaPot work for your vacuum pot dishes? Thank you for your posts!
Hello Chris,
I see some recipes call it a vacuum cooker. You may be able to find something using those search terms. Basically, it’s a giant thermos flask that you can put a whole pot of stew in.
But all roads lead to Rome, so however you apply heat to the stew over a long enough period of time will get you the same results. A pressure cooker cooks faster than on the stovetop so you will have to account for that. Cooking time with an instapot should be similar to doing it on the stovetop, or braising it in the oven.
Cheers!