RECIPES | This lamb shank pie recipe is a great dish during the colder months. Despite the fact that it takes several hours to cook, it’s relatively low effort as it spends most of its time simmering away to produce a rich, hearty pie. You just need to sit back and relax while it does most of the work for you.
Preparation Time: 20 minutes / Cooking Time: 4.5 hours/ Serves 8-10
Ingredients
- 2 lamb shanks, approximately 850g
- 1 medium brown onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, diced
- 20ml vegetable oil
- 310g zucchini, diced
- 1kg tomatoes, diced
- 2 bay leaves
- 750g passata (tomato puree)
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 2 medium carrots, diced
- 1L water
- 250ml robust red wine
- 2-3 sheets short crust pastry, defrosted
- 1 egg yolk
Method
- Heat the oil in a large heavy bottom pot.
- Add the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, bay leaves and shanks and cook until brown.
- Add the zucchini, tomatoes, passata, 1L of water, and wine to the pot, and cook on a simmer for 3.5hrs.
- Remove the pot from the heat and set it aside for 5 minutes to cool slightly. Once cool enough to handle, discard the shank bones and the bay leaves. Transfer to your baking container.
- Roll out your short crust pastry to about 1cm larger than the size of your baking dish with a thickness of a few millimeters. This size will depend whether you want to make one large pie of individual portions.
- Cover the top of the pie mixture with the short crust pastry and make sure the crust over hangs the edge by a centimeter.
- Brush the short crust pastry with the egg yolk and bake in a 220°C fan forced oven for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden.
- Serve immediately.
Notes
If you don’t want to serve all of the pie in one sitting at step four place the pie filling into an airtight container and refrigerate. When you are ready to serve continue with steps 5-8 however bake the pie for 45 minutes. This will provide enough time for the pie to completely heat through.