If you are one of those tens of thousands of Finnish hunters who don't know what to do with all the elk meat they've shot this season, read ahead. If you are like me and didn't have the time to go hunting for the fifth year in a row, read ahead. If you just love venison, read ahead. Everybody else is also invited to enjoy the delicious texture and taste of elk!
Did you know?
In Europe the animal Finns call hirvi is an elk in English, but in North America it is a moose. What Americans call an elk is a different deer altogether, the wapiti, and moose, I'm told, is a loan from an Algonquian language. So the elk in the title is our own hirvi, a moose to American readers.
A couple of days ago, when I went to my de facto butcher, Reinin Liha in the Hakaniemi market hall, to buy some beef, I saw these über-beautiful, dark red elk shanks. I have found everything from porterhouse steaks to a whole goose at that counter, but I had never seen elk shanks there before. Osso buco made from beef, veal or goat is one of my all-time favourite dishes. The rich, hearty and meaty taste of a broth in which marrow bones have simmered slowly for hours is difficult to beat. So when I saw the elk shanks I immediately knew I had to buy them and cook some elk buco!
Each slice is a disc of dark red meat around a piece of bone, with the marrow showing pink in the middle and white sinew along the edges. The marrow is what the whole dish is about. Osso buco is Italian for 'bone with a hole', and the hole is where the marrow sits. The sinew is why the shanks need three to four hours on a low heat. Before that they are tough, and after it the meat falls off the bone by itself.
In addition to being an excellent source of fresh meat, Reinin Liha is becoming one of my favourite sources of tasty recipes. This time the shanks came with an elk osso buco recipe, courtesy of Chef Nicola Tanda. Unlike traditional osso buco recipes it uses very few spices and relies on the rich game taste of the elk meat. It is an osso buco in bianco, made with white wine and broth and no tomato at all. Juniper berries give the broth an elegant, faint trace of the resinous forests where the elk spent his time before ending up on my plate.
Recipe card
Elk Osso Buco
- Serves 2-4
- Simmering 3-4 hours
You will need
For the osso buco
| 6 slices | elk shank, 3 cm (1 in) thick |
| 100 ml | all-purpose flour |
| 2 tbsp | butter |
| 3 tbsp | virgin olive oil |
| 1 | onion, chopped |
| 8 | juniper berries, crushed |
| salt and pepper to taste | |
| 250 ml (1 cup) | dry white wine |
| 500 ml (2 cups) | beef broth |
| (optional: brown Maizena sauce thickener) | |
| (optional: 2 cans of Heinz beans in tomato sauce) |
For the gremolata
| 2 | cloves of garlic |
| 1 tsp | lemon zest |
| half a bunch | fresh flat-leaf parsley |
Method
Osso buco
- Mix salt and pepper into the flour on a flat plate and coat the shanks evenly with the flour. Heat the butter and oil in a heavy casserole and brown the shanks on both sides. It's easier to do this in several batches.
- Chop the onion and add it to the pot with the shanks. Cook for a while and add more salt and pepper to taste. Crush the juniper berries and add them to the pot. Add the wine and beef broth and bring to the boil. Turn the heat to low and simmer for 3-4 hours, until the meat is tender and falls off the bone.
- When the meat is done, take it out of the pot and boil the broth until thick, and/or add brown Maizena until the broth is nice and thick. Put the meat back into the broth.
Gremolata
- Zest the lemon, chop the garlic and parsley very finely and mix carefully. Sprinkle on top of the osso buco.
Optional: with beans
- Remove the bones but leave the marrow. Add two cans of beans to the broth and mix well. This way you don't necessarily need rice or potatoes on the side but have a nice standalone dish.
I made mine with the beans, as you can see in the picture, so no rice or potatoes were needed. Risotto milanese, the traditional partner of osso buco, would have been far too chichi for this dish, and I had made one a couple of weeks earlier with an ordinary beef buco anyway. The marrow got sucked carefully out of the bones, though.
3 comments
Mmmm, gremolataa! Meinaatko oikeesti ettet duunannut samalla luuytimellä maustettua risotto milanesea?
Anna: risotto milanese olisi ollut ihan liian shishi-fufu tälle ruualle! Sitä tein tosin pari viikkoa sitten perinteisen lehmä-bucon kanssa. Ytimet tuli kyllä imeskeltyä huolellisesti putkiluista. Slurp!
Oooh! I love osso buco...this is one of my mom's specialties, but with beef. And now I make it too 🙂 I wish I could have some with elk! I miss Finland!