Greek · Main

Arni Giouvetsi

Intermediate
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

warm-spiced · umami-deep · aromatic · briny Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, ending saline and clean.

Ingredients

4 lamb shanks, about 1.6 kg
10 g fine salt
60 ml olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, sliced
400 g tinned chopped tomatoes
30 g tomato paste
1 short cinnamon stick
3 allspice berries
1 bay leaf
150 ml dry red wine
900 ml light lamb or chicken stock
350 g kritharaki (orzo)
80 g kefalotyri, grated
3 g black pepper, ground

Equipment

Grater / zester

The skills inside

Deglazing & pan sauces Braising Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Salt the shanks and brown them hard in the oil in a wide casserole, until the surface is the colour of dark toast and the pan smells nutty rather than scorched.
Lift them out, soften the onion and garlic in the same fat, stir in the tomato paste and cook it until it turns from red to brick, then deglaze with the wine.
Return the shanks with the tomatoes, cinnamon, allspice, bay, pepper and 600 ml of the stock, cover, and braise at 160C (320F) for about 2 hours 30 minutes, until a fork turns in the meat with no grip. 120 min
Raise the oven to 180C (350F). Lift the shanks out, stir the raw orzo and the last 300 ml of stock, boiling hot, into the sauce, bring the pot back to a simmer on the hob, sit the shanks on top and return it uncovered to the oven for 15 minutes to 18 minutes. 15 min
Pull it while the orzo still has bite and the sauce looks too loose, scatter the kefalotyri and let it stand 10 minutes; it tightens to exactly right as it rests. 10 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Braising 39 recipes

The pieces went into the liquid already deep brown on their faces, and the pot floor gave up its fond to that liquid rather than keeping it.
The liquid comes partway up the pieces and stays there for the whole cook (not submerged, not run dry), and it never boils: the surface trembles and no more.
It went long enough for the collagen to convert: a fork twists in it with almost no resistance, and the piece still lifts out whole rather than falling into shreds.
The liquid has become a sauce: it has body, it coats the back of a spoon, and it tastes concentrated rather than thin and washed out.
The meat is moist and seasoned through to its centre, not dry fibres sitting inside a good sauce.

Where it goes wrong The oven or the burner ran too hot and the liquid boiled, so the fibres tightened and squeezed their moisture out: it shreds dry into a thin greasy liquid, and more time makes it worse rather than better.

Deglazing & pan sauces 49 recipes

The pan still holds its fond. Nothing has been rinsed, wiped, or soaked, and the browned layer is intact on the floor.
Excess fat was poured off first and the browned layer left behind; the fat is not the flavour and a sauce carrying all of it will not come together.
The liquid went into a still-hot pan and the floor came clean: scraped while it bubbles, the base goes from stuck brown to bare metal and the sauce darkens as it takes it up.
The fond was brown and not black. A burnt floor dissolves into bitterness that cannot be seasoned out, and is better washed away than deglazed.
Reduced first and seasoned afterwards, tasted at the consistency it will be served at rather than at the start.

Where it goes wrong The pan was left to stand and go cold before anybody came back to it. Cold fond will not dissolve, so the scraping lifts nothing, and the sauce arrives thin and pale with the flavour it was supposed to carry still welded to the metal.

At the Table

The Pour: Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
Also Right: Malbec
From the Taps: Porter
Zero-Proof: Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Arni Giouvetsi Technique: Deglazing & pan saucesThe skill inside this recipe Technique: BraisingThe skill inside this recipe Search YouTube: Akis Petretzikis on Arni Giouvetsi A YouTube search for Akis Petretzikis and this dish. No affiliation.