Osso Buco with Beef Shanks

I love classic osso buco (AW-soh BOO-koh) made with veal shanks that are braised in wine, stock and a whole bunch of vegetable ingredients. Some home cooks are not thrilled with using veal as an ingredient, others may find veal shanks too expensive so I thought I would give beef shanks a try and see if it made a difference.

Bottom line – it did. The meal was good, not great.

I made some changes to my Osso Buco recipe on my web site. Besides substituting beef for veal, I took some short cuts to make the recipe faster to prep and easier to make at home but I don’t think that’s what affected the final outcome of the dish.

The beef shanks are just not as flavorful or tender as the veal shanks. Now maybe I didn’t cook the beef shanks as long as they needed to be cooked, but after two hours, they were a little dry and didn’t fall off the bone like veal shanks do.

The sauce resulting from braising the meat in the wine and stock with all those vegetables is still incredible. I can’t wait to serve the leftovers on some wide pasta noodles with all that wonderful sauce.

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