Veal Shanks with Mushrooms, Slow Cooker

I use tapioca in the slow cooker to thicken sauces…. Because it’s easy.

I add regular tapioca at the beginning, and if the sauce needs more at the end, I add instant tapioca.

It never occurred to me that tapioca could be used as a thickening agent until I moved to France. It’s very popular here.

If you prefer you can add maizena / cornstarch stirred into a bit of water about 30 minutes before you are ready to serve.

Both work well.

I was planning on making beef / veal tips with mushrooms but I saw the veal shanks in the market. I don’t often see them.

Actually, if I want to make Osso Buco I never see them.

But there they were, looking beautiful…. and I had just made Osso Buco.

Thus a recipe is born.

Click here to Pin Veal Shanks with Mushrooms, Slow Cooker

Veal Shanks with Mushrooms, Slow Cooker

Print Recipe

This is one of the rare time that I brown the meat and veggies before adding to the slow cooker. In this case it’s worth the extra step.

• Author: Katie Zeller
• Prep Time: 30 minutes
• Cook Time: 6 hours
• Total Time: 6 hours 30 minutes
• Yield: 2 servings 1x
• Category: Beef & Veal
• Method: Slow Cooker

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 3 veal shanks
• 8 small shallots, cut in half
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4oz (250gr) mushrooms, chopped
• 1 rib celery, chopped
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp instant coffee
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp parsley
• 2 tbs tapioca
• 1/2 cup (4oz, 120ml) beef stock
• 1/2 cup (4oz, 120ml) dry sherry
• 1 tbs olive oil
• optional – if needed: 2 tsp instant tapioca or 1 tbs cornstarch

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Instructions

• Heat 1 tbs oil in a large skillet. Add veal and brown on all sides. Remove to slow cooker.
• Sprinkle veal with tapioca.
• Add shallots, mushrooms, celery, garlic, paprika to skillet and sauté briefly.
• Add stock, sherry, herbs, coffee, and simmer briefly, stirring well.
• Pour over veal.
• Cover and cook, low heat, 6 – 7 hours.
• Check 30 minutes before serving and if sauce needs to be thickened add 2 tsp instant tapioca or 1 tbs cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbs water.
• When ready, remove to a platter and serve.

Notes

Coffee adds a deep color and depth of flavor to this dish.
Small onions can be substituted for the shallots.

In other news….

This is a WordPress blog.

I’ve been using WordPress for a long time and have been very happy with it. It’s easy to use and does what I want it to the way I want to do it.

They (WP) have been keeping the world in suspense for months about the new editor: Gutenberg.

It’s supposed to be wonderful and make blog writer’s lives sooooo much easier.

I tried it today.

Thankfully there is also the equivalent of a ‘go back’ switch.

It may be wonderful for people who just type words and insert photos amongst their words, but I do recipes.

My recipes are done in HTML / rich snippets so I can keep Google happy and so that people searching for stuff can find them.

I have an HTML template, that I designed / wrote that I use for my recipes.

When I pasted my template (as I always do) into the new Gutenberg editor it completely changed the HTML and instead of 20 lines of code there were about 100 lines of code.

I hit the ‘go back to the old editor’ button.

I will now

• Figure out how to use Gutenberg with my blog.
• Find out if the old editor is being discontinued so I have to use Gutenberg.
• Find a forum to complain find helpful information.

In the meantime, if you notice my blog behaving strangely please let me now. Today, at one point, when I looked at it there were red squares everywhere…..