Lovely lamb shanks

[crphillips]

Today i cooked my first lamb shanks and they were amazing. I pretty much made the recipe up after looking at many recipes, rubs and BBQ sauces and kinda came up with something that i liked the sound of and what i thought would go well with lamb.

Here's what i did.

Dry rub - paprika, cumin, garlic, salt, pepper

Smoked for 2 hours

Coated with BBQ sauce - Honey, black current jam/jelly, brown sugar, soy sauce, cumin.

Then placed into tin foil with a few roughly chopped onions and carrots then added a little lamb stock. Wrapped up and Treagered on medium for 3 hours.

Removed from foil and glazed with some more of the above BBQ sauce and smoked for a final 45 mins.

Fell apart, moist and gorgeous!

Served with roast veg and a jacket potato with lashings of butter and salt.

[Zippy]

Looks lush. I am gonna give lamb shanks a go at some point on the WSM.

What sort of temps did you have them on at? I've got no concept of how hot a Traeger on medium is?

[Vic.]

looking good, nice glaze there

[crphillips]

Yeah first time i did red meat i made a typical tomato based BBQ sauce but wasn't too keen. Much prefer the honey/soya type glaze instead. Was very tasty.

[ZUL]

looks amazing, defo something I'm going to be looking to experiment with myself.

If possible could you share cooking temps/times and a rough method that you used?

[jotch]

With that kind of rub I'm guessing you ended up with a type of crispy duck style of lamb that you'd find in a chinese restaurant, albeit with a nice smokey taste? I might be wrong however.

Cinnamon is a good spice to use on Lamb...but it has to be subtle.

[crphillips]

Dunno really. I wouldn't say it tasted like crispy duck. I didn't want the glaze and rub to flavour the lamb too much as i love the taste of lamb and it's quite a strong tasting meat so i didn't want to disguise it and end up with a generic BBQ'd meat taste.

Method

Glaze -

2 tbsp runny honey
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp blackcurrent jam
1/2 tsp salt

Dry rub

1tsp mild chilly powder
2tsp paprika
1tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Unwrap lamb shanks. Apply dry rub. Smoke for 3 hours. Coat lamb with glaze. Place into individual foil parcels. Add some roughly chopped carrots and onions and a little stock to each parcel along with a sprinkling of rosemary and a few mint leaves. Wrap up tight and cook on medium for 2 hours. Remove from foil and apply plenty of glaze. Smoke again for 45 mins applying glaze several times.

Done.

[jotch]

Sounds nice, the smoke wouldn't make it taste like the chinese version I guess. At my local chinese takeway they do crispy duck and crispy lamb...both taste quite similar but the lamb is cheaper. With that rub and glaze I just started thinking about chinese food

[crphillips]

Our Chinese does Mongolian cripsy lamb and it is way better than the crispy duck.....but then i do love lamb!

Gotta say that lamb is the best thing i've eaten on the Traeger although i haven't done more than 5 cooks on it so far.

Got 6 bags of Hickory pellets arriving tomorrow!

Also been in touch with a company in america. They can ship food grade Hickory pellets to my local port for around £500 per tonn. Fancy ordering a tonn.

[sloman]

Do you have a link for the American company please...