Fall-Off-The-Bone Greek Lamb Shanks with Lemony Potatoes

Hi everyone, how are you? Welcome to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today I'm going to show you a much quicker way to make lamb where it's falling off the bone and it's tender. But it doesn't take hours to make because I'm going to be making the lamb in a pressure cooker first. And then I'll finish it off in the oven with all that broth that it's going to release. The potatoes are going to soak that all up and just have so much flavor. Let me show you how I make it. Okay, we're going to begin with the lamb shanks. I have four decent sized lamb shanks here. They've been washed and patted completely dry. You can brown these in the pressure cooker with the saute function. It's just going to take longer and I'm really trying to save time here. And since these are going to roast later on, they're just going to go in the same tray anyway. My oven is preheated to the broil setting. I'm just going to season these with some salt and freshly cracked black pepper. Very simply on both sides. No olive oil or anything because lamb shanks have lots of fat. It's going to be released, we don't need to add any more. They're going to go into the broiler, 10 minutes on one side, flip them over, 10 minutes on the other. You're going to have no mess to clean up on the stovetop or in your pressure cooker. And it's going to happen so quickly. In the meantime, I'll prepare the remaining ingredients. So I have one onion here. I'm going to peel it and finely chop it. And this will go in my pressure cooker that's set to the saute setting. My pressure cooker tends to get really hot, so keep an eye on it. You don't want to step away at this point because it could burn your onions if yours runs a little bit hot too. If that happens, you can either take out that stainless steel insert for a little while or just turn it off. So that way it can cook with the residual heat. We're just cooking the onion in a little bit of olive oil until it's nice and soft and golden. Once that happens, I'll add in my grated garlic cloves. You can add as much as you like. I grated about six garlic cloves. You can put a minimum of three in there if you want. More is better in my opinion. Just warm them through until they're fragrant. And then I'll go in with a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste. Cook that down as well. It gets rid of that bitter taste. Then the lamb shanks are going to go in here with the seasonings. I'll add one cup of water to this with the juice of a lemon. Teaspoon of salt. A little bit of freshly cracked black pepper. A teaspoon of dried crushed oregano. Ground cumin. You could do half a teaspoon or one. I go a little bit heavier on the spices. It really helps with the lamb flavor. And then a teaspoon of ground coriander. This is going to get covered. And I'll set my pressure cooker to pressure cook at 45 minutes. In that time, the lamb is going to become so nice and tender. After 45 minutes, you could either let it naturally release, which takes about 20-30 minutes. Or you can wait 10 minutes and then release the steam manually. And you'll see that the lamb shanks are so tender. The meat should be almost falling off the bone. There'll be some nice broth in there, which the potatoes are going to cook in. I'm using these small golden potatoes. I'll just quarter them. The big ones are going to get quartered. And then the small ones, I'll just cut them in half. Arrange them on the baking tray. I'm using the same baking tray from before. I'll drizzle just the tiniest bit of olive oil on them. Some salt. Freshly cracked black pepper. I have a little bit. I did wash this pan because I used it for another recipe, so it got pretty burned. But I did reserve the fat that was released when the lamb was browning. And I'll coat some of the potatoes in that. I already put salt and freshly cracked black pepper, like I said. The juice of a lemon. I love lemon with lamb and potatoes. It tastes so good. I don't feel like adding fresh garlic to this. So I'll just sprinkle a little bit of dried granulated garlic on top. Some crushed dried oregano. A little pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. And then the lamb is going to go in here. You just want to toss the potatoes around first, so that way they're nicely coated. And all the broth that the lamb has released in the pressure cooker, that's going to go in the pan as well. You can add a little bit more water to this if you want, if the potatoes aren't mostly submerged in that liquid. You want them to drink all of that broth up and get that flavor from there. Now it's going to go in the oven. The oven is preheated to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. And it'll bake in there for 45 to 55 minutes. The lamb is going to get beautiful color on top. You want the potatoes to be fork tender. You can go in halfway and flip the lamb over, so it doesn't get too dark and dry on one side. Once it comes out of the oven, you can just garnish this with some finely chopped parsley, and it's ready to serve. And there you have it. The lamb is still tender and falling off of the bones. The potatoes are still soft, but you can just mash them into that luscious sauce. All we need to serve this with is some tzatziki, maybe some rice pilaf. You can just make some rice pilaf in the rice cooker. I have a recipe for that on the blog as well. I'll put it in the recipe index, so that way it's linked together. And you can just head on over there and make this all together. It'll be done in way less time than roasting it in the oven slowly. Sometimes it takes three, four hours to get lamb nice and tender. This is a nice shortcut. It's elegant. It's delicious. And it's so simple to make, as you saw. I hope you guys give this recipe a try. The printable recipe is on the blog, GiveMeTrashDishes.com. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all next time. Yia sas. Mmm. So much flavor.