I used to come home from school, my mother would make a roast. I’d be like ah yes, it’s that day, it still makes me feel the same way. It's crazy. Slow cooked lamb is one of my favourite things to eat and lucky for me, it's one of the easiest things to do in the kitchen. I've got a recipe with these beautiful Aussie lamb shanks and I tell you what, it couldn't be simpler, but it is so delicious. Let's get started. I'm going to take them and season them up with just a little salt and pepper. So the magic happens when you cook meat on the bone. It gets a little bit sweet. There's lots of collagen, which makes the sauce delicious and thick. This really is just a wonderful, wonderful way to cook meat. I'm going to drizzle a little olive oil over the shanks in the pan, just like that into a nice hot pan. Just a bit more olive oil. We're going to get that beautiful caramelisation on the lamb and our vegetables and get a little colour and sweat those down. Then the whole thing will go into the oven. So I'm going to preheat my oven to 100. And once you've got that beautiful char, that really nice, deep caramelisation on the shanks, go ahead and remove them from the pan. Gorgeous. If you've got too much fat in your pan, you might want to just pour a little bit off, because that's what I'm going to saute my veggies in, and then I've got carrots, onions and garlic and I toss it all in together. So you're going to saute this for just a couple of minutes. And the reason you're doing that is just to draw some flavour out of the vegetables. Take some thyme sprigs, add that to your pan. And then once your vegetables soften, you can add your tomato paste. I like using tomato paste with lamb shanks because it adds a little bit of body to the dish. A little thickness. Now if you're watching me cook this and you think ah, I'd love to add some fennel to that, or some turnip, be my guest, any kind of root vegetable will work in this dish. Now you add the white wine first because you do a thing called deglazing. And what that does is it releases all of the flavours from the pan. We call it a fom, that's what sort of burned onto the bottom of that pan and then that white wine just lifts it all up a little bit of acidity helps to sort of break down any of that richness. And then you give it a stir and you can see all that flavour. Perfect. Shanks go back. Go ahead and pour your broth. Chicken stock’s a bit of an all rounder, you can kind of use it with everything. So you can see that coming up to a simmer already. All those incredible flavours that we've already got in there. Now I take it to my oven, it goes in at 150 for an hour and 15 minutes. The shanks have been in for an hour and a quarter. So I'm going to pull them out, turn them over and then put them back in. Oh yeah. And then we'll finish that cooking process. Now even if it's poking out a little from the stock, it doesn't mean it's not cooking, at steaming actually because the steam circulating around that pot. But you do want them to be submerged at some point through that cooking process. Okay, chuck your lid back on and it goes back in the oven for another hour. Now for the last 20 minutes, you just remove the lid and then that way it’ll get just that little bit thicker. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Have a look at that goodness. What we do now is gently and carefully remove the shanks from the broth. The smell is insane. So good. And of course when these lamb shanks are cooking, a little fat may come out of them. And if it does, and you want to remove it, you sure can, just get a big spoon like I've got here. Just skim any of that fat off. Get a little piece of foil, cover those shanks, and that will just help them to keep warm. Because the next thing we're going to do is bring this up to the boil and add some beans. So go ahead and dump those in. You're trying to have a little taste because you might have to adjust the seasoning. Oh, wow. It's so good. It's really rich and lamby. You taste all those vegetables and the aromatics. It doesn't need any salt, you've got to remember there's a little salt in the stock and we have reduced the quantity which means that it's gonna get more salty so the only thing it needs is a little crack of pepper. Now to finish this off with just a little freshness, you can take just a few sprigs of thyme and just run your fingers up the side and get those beautiful leaves hitting the pan. I'll tell you the second they hit the stock, you smell it. Pretty cool. Now once your broth has a lovely consistency like this has. I think it's ready to serve you. Pick this up, pour the whole thing in. Oh that looks good. Get those gorgeous lamb shanks. Just nestle them in there. Last but certainly not least I've got some watercress. Now watercress has a really interesting bitterness to it. The lamb’s really rich so a little lemon zest, a little watercress, it really makes the world of difference. Crack of pepper, one more tiny drizzle of olive oil, that my friends is a feast fit for a king and queen.