Bear Shank Osso Buco

Bear Shank Osso Buco. It is a meal so commanding that just the name is a sentence of its own. I can’t think of a dish that I feel more comforted by and calm while preparing, but at the same time have zero patience as I wait for it to finish in the oven. It is, to me, the definition of comfort food.

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Bear Shank Osso Buco Final Plate

Translating from Italian to English, Osso Buco literally means “bone with a hole” because the dish is the braising of the shank from an animal. The shanks are crosscut, exposing the marrow hole of the bone, and the meat surrounding the bone is tough. Osso Buco takes these two unique aspects of the cut of meat, the still intact marrow of the bone and the ligament filled tough meat, to create a very flavorful, hearty, and tender dish.  

Though not a traditional Osso Buco, this Bear Shank Osso Buco is packed with a full flavor experience! The bear shank is tender and savory, the sauce is rich and silky from the bone marrow but also incredibly flavorful from the spice mixture, and the polenta is creamy and cheesy. It also isn’t too hard to pull off!

The hardest part of preparing Bear Shank Osso Buco is the wait. You brown your shank, chop up your vegetables, put all the kids in the dutch oven swimming pool, and then…you wait…for hours.

The wait is definitely worth it, but man-oh-man does it feel like forever.

Osso Buco’s story starts from Celtic origins and the culinary tradition of Lombard cuisine. Lombard cuisine, developed mostly in the Lombardy provinces of Italy, but this cacophony of cooking influences across centuries of cultures is a collection of rices, pastas, soups, risottos, and polenta. The cuisine is extremely varied, but utilizes a lot of butter, oils, and other cooking fats. It is also known for dishes that are “low and slow” such as braised meats and stews. 

A traditional Lombard cuisine Osso Buco is a veal shank slow braised in white wine and broth with carrots, onions, and celery. With this simple presentation, the marrow is the star of the show.

This Bear Shank Osso Buco recipe has a little bit more going on than a traditional Osso Buco, but it was built using the blocks of a traditional Osso Buco with a little “adjusting” to help the bear shank shine a little more.

Let’s Make Bear Shank Osso Buco

So, let’s get started. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, preheat your dutch oven over medium heat. Once the dutch oven is hot, add about a half cup of chopped pancetta and brown until just crispy. Remove the pancetta and set to the side, but reserve the fats left behind for cooking the rest of the dish.

Lightly dust your bear shank in a mixture of flour, salt, and black pepper. Place the coated bear shank into the pancetta fat and brown five minutes per side. If your pancetta didn’t leave enough fat behind for browning your bear shank, add a little oil or butter to the pan.

Remove the browned shank and set aside. To the dutch oven, now add one large diced onion, four diced carrots, four diced stalks of celery, and a large minced shallot. Coat everything in the leftover fats and oils and let cook for five to seven minutes, or until the onion starts to turn translucent. 

Braising liquid flavoring: diced carrots, celery, onions, and minced shallot.

Deglaze the dutch oven with a cup of white wine. I always take a minute to bask in the steam from the white wine hitting the hot pan. It smells amazing. I also do that when I put onions into butter. Nothing smells better than onions in butter. Anyway, let the wine cook down for a few minutes to release some of the alcohol, and then add the cup of vegetable stock.

This next step is where we will leave the familiar trail that leads to Osso Buco and add a little flair of our own. Traditionally, Osso Buco does not include tomatoes, but I was just feeling the need to have some tomatoes. I added a pint of cherry tomatoes to the dish. Season to taste with a little salt and pepper. It is also time to add our little bundle of spice joy.

To make your own little bundle of spices, cut a square from cheese cloth and get yourself some twine. You can leave the spices whole because you will pull the entire little bundle from the pot at the end of cooking. My little bouquet bundle included a few sprigs of fresh thyme, a stem of fresh rosemary, a little piece of mace, two bay leaves, a full star anise, and five whole cloves. Tie it up, take a moment to say “Awww” at how cute it is, and drop it into the pot.

Spice bouquet bundle: star anise, whole cloves, thyme, rosemary, mace, and bay leaves

Finally, nestle the bear shank back into the liquid and cover. The liquid should reach about halfway up the shank at all times, so you might check it throughout the braising process to ensure the liquid stays full enough. Shanks are a pretty tough cut of meat off most animals. They are also full of ligaments and tendons, which aren’t always the most appealing items to find in a dish; however, braising actually uses the “flaws” of a shank to the dish’s advantage. The slow cooking at a low temperature in basically a sauna of braising liquid takes the shank meat from tough to tender, sweet, and just a little caramelized from the initial browning. It also breaks down the tastier parts of the ligaments and tendons, releasing collagen into your braising liquid and thus laying the groundwork for a very flavorful and hearty gravy for your final dish.

Slide your dutch oven into a preheated oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Let the shank cook for at least three hours. The shank should be falling apart when you pull it out of the oven. It should be fork tender and shred easily.

Let’s Make Cheesy Polenta

About thirty minutes before your shank is ready to serve, start the polenta. I am in love with cheesy polenta. It is so creamy, a little salty, and soaks up the liquid of anything you top it with. It’s delicious!

You want to make sure your polenta cooks for about thirty minutes so you can start to really break down the corn bits. You want smooth and creamy here. If you do the quick cook recommended on the package, you will end up with chewier and even a bit hard polenta, which is fine, but trust me the slow longer cook is worth the time and effort.

Add three cups of water to a saucepan and a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil and then whisk in your cup of polenta. Stir constantly while the polenta thickens. Turn the heat down to low and let the polenta slow cook for up to a half an hour, the longer the better. Stir it frequently to keep it from sticking to the bottom. If it starts to get to dried out, add a little more liquid.

Right before you are ready to pull the polenta from the stove, pour in a cup of cheese. I used gruyere for this dish. The salty but tangy flavor of gruyere sounded perfect with the spice bouquet used to braise the bear shank.

Whelp! It’s time to plate up this bear shank Osso Buco. I can hardly wait! Put a heaping scoop of cheesy, gooey, creamy polenta in a shallow bowl. Add chunks of tender, savory bear shank meat over the top and then drench in the braising liquid gravy. Be sure to get plenty of carrots, celery, and tomatoes. Sprinkle with pancetta bits and fresh minced parsley.

Finally, time to dig in!

Happy Hunting

If You Enjoyed This Recipe, You’ll Also Like…

Sweet Barbacoa Bear Bowl

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Seared Deer Steak Medallions in a Cilantro Jalapeno Lime Sauce

Homemade Pheasant Stock

"Be worthy of your game." ~ George Bird Evans

Learning to process game meat has been an eye opening experience.  It is a challenging and ever-evolving labor.  Cleaning a harvest is different, not only for different groups of animals, but even for different species within a specific subgroup of animals.  For example, it is obvious that a fish is cleaned differently than a duck, but it isn't always obvious that a duck may be cleaned differently than a goose, or even another species of duck. Cleaning also varies on how you plan to prepare or use the animal.  I feel I have only touched on the surface of cleaning animals.

Cleaning is just the beginning step of processing game meat too.  Storing and preserving meat is an entirely different story.  And not to mention learning how to use different parts of the animal! We often hear stories of how Native Americans used every part of an animal. Meat was obviously processed and eaten, but hides or feathers were used for shelter creation or clothing, bones could be constructed into tools or weapons, and tendons or sinew could be used to create thread or string.  Of course, those few examples only brush on the surface of how many parts of an animal are useful.

Utilizing the entire animal was definitely a survival tactic for Native Americans, and as a modern day hunter, that drive for survival isn't quite the same.  However, many hunters strive to use as much of an animal as possible.  Whether this desire comes from a simple curiosity as to what you can come up with to use what you have at hand, or is from a deeper desire to use every part of the animal as a form of respect, there are limitless possibilities on what to create or how to utilize an animal in its entirety, and it is definitely a learning process.

So, while this might be a small step in terms of all the possible things I could use a pheasant for, it is a first step and I enjoyed trying something new with a different part of the bird.  After cleaning all the meat from the pheasant, I saved the carcass and made a simple pheasant stock.  While I was excited to find a use for the leftover bones of my pheasant harvest, my primary drive for creating a pheasant stock developed from a nagging feeling I got when using chicken stock in my pheasant recipes.  For some reason, it bothered me when I would create a soup or sauce recipe for my pheasant meal, but had to use chicken stock as the base.  It seemed silly. So, I made a small batch of pheasant stock from the carcass and can now use that as the base for whatever pheasant recipe I work on next.

For the stock, a few simple ingredients are necessary to help develop a deeper flavor profile.  Aside from the pheasant carcass, you will need carrots, celery, and onion.  I used around four medium sized carrots, three stalks of celery, and two medium sized onions.  You could also add a few cloves of garlic.  To create a little uniqueness in my stock, I also added in a four inch piece of whole ginger root.

Preheat the oven to 400 Fahrenheit and roast the pheasant carcass, celery, carrots, onion, and ginger root for 20 minutes.  There is no need to cut anything up or do any type of prep work before roasting.  The only step I took was the cut the onions in half.  I did not peel the carrots or even remove the onion skin.  If I had added garlic to this stock, I would have roasted the cloves whole as well.

Once the vegetables and pheasant are done roasting, transfer everything to a large pot.  I did remove some of the skin from the ginger root before adding it to the pot, but that was about it.  I left the onions whole and broke the celery in half so it would fit in the pot, but other than that not much work to be done!  At this point, toss in a couple of bay leaves and add enough water to the pot to cover everything by about two inches.  The amount of water needed will vary based on the size of your pot, but it should be somewhere between eight and twelve cups.  I used ten for my pot.  Heat the pot over a medium heat and watch until the water starts to boil.  Once it boils, cover the pot and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Let the stock simmer for a few hours, checking occasionally to make sure there is still enough liquid in the pot and that the pot is still just simmering and not boiling.  I let my stock simmer for about four hours.  The liquid reduced from ten cups to eight by the end of the cooking time.

If you are interested in creating a little bit of a different flavor profile for your pheasant stock, instead of using onions you could substitute leeks.  You could also add fennel for a hint of licorice.  Herbs can also be infused into the stock, such as thyme, sage, or basil.  Strain the entire pot through a fine mesh colander, and discard all the vegetables and carcass.  Allow the liquid to cool.  In the end, the stock should be a beautiful auburn color and have a mild savory flavor.

I plan on using my stock within the next couple of days, so I poured it into mason jars and stuck it in the fridge.  It should last in the fridge for about five days.  Canning the stock is another option; however the process for cooking is a bit different.  I prefer to freeze homemade stock that I am not going to use.  I put it in a large Tupperware container and just pop it in the freezer.  It will last indefinitely in the freezer.

This stock has a hint of the richness from the pheasant bones and also a clean, fresh taste from the vegetables.  It is not salty, which took me a minute to get used to.  When using store bought chicken stock, the stock is salted and, for me, that is the main flavor that stands out.  This pheasant stock is a base starting point for any sauces, broths, or soups you might create with it.  Think of the stock as a building block that will enhance and develop flavor in your dish.  This recipe allows you to extract the umami (one of the five basic tastes) to use as an ingredient from a bird carcass or other bones.  It also gives a little more reward to yourself and the animal that provided for you.

Happy Hunting!