Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Made Osso Bucco

I've been wanting to make Osso Bucco with venison after watching Rinella do it on Meateater but haven't yet. Wife and I went to lunch today and it was on the menu so gave it a try - very good. This was made with pork - is that common or is lamb more typically used?

I've been wanting to make Osso Bucco with venison after watching Rinella do it on Meateater but haven't yet. Wife and I went to lunch today and it was on the menu so gave it a try - very good. This was made with pork - is that common or is lamb more typically used?

Since I don't eat pork it may be that I've just never noticed pork Osso Bucco. I was in a small town in Italy once (Orvieto) and had lamb Osso Bucco that was probably in the top 1% of all good food I've ever had. I asked beforehand if there was any pork in it and the waiter said real Osso Bucco will never have pork, and this wasn't even real Osso Bucco since it was lamb. I guess that may have been his way of not admitting there was pork in it...

Made it for dinner tonight, according to the recipe in Rao's Cookbook. It's a Northern Italian favorite that I was introduced to in fancy Long Island Italian restaurants in the late 1970s and 1980s, and I've always loved it. I started making it myself some thirty years ago.

It's a braised veal shank dish, i.e., cooked in a dutch oven covered in white wine, chicken broth, tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery and garlic. It's the low and slow way of cooking meats that would otherwise be tough, but cooked that way are silky, moist, tender, and delicious.

This one turned out so tender that it literally fell off the bone, since all the connective tissues dissolved into the cooking liquids. For an accompaniment, I chose orzo. The sauce is made from the liquids it's cooked in.

Thanks, that looks like what I'm craving. I just picked up a bunch of shanks and they were definitely not cheap ($10 a lb), but for a Sunday family meal it should be dang good.

Veal?

Lamb.

It's funny, but it wasn't long ago when lamb shanks were nearly a throw away part of a leg of lamb. Very cheap.

No kidding. My parents didn't have a ton of money when we were kids and they always got the cheap cuts, whether it was tongue, liver, gizzards, bones or shanks. I took a look at tongue prices when I was looking for the lamb shanks and they wanted $40+ for a relatively small tongue (beef). $10 for a small bag of soup bones. The weird thing is that the one thing that we used to love as kids for special occasions, beef ribs, is now actually relatively cheap.