At the butchers on Friday, I spotted beef shin. I don’t recall cooking it before but it sounded like something for slow cooking, which the butcher confirmed. Yesterday, it was time to cook it up so I did a survey of online advice and settled on a Felicity Cloake piece from The Guardian: How to Cook Perfect Beef Stew.

Meat stews aren’t entirely new to me so I mainly used it as inspiration rather than instruction, although the tip about trimming back the silvery film on the outside of the meat was a good one. The trimming was quite time-consuming but eventually I ended up with a bowl full of beef chunks which I coated in seasoned flour (salt, pepper and also some cumin and all-spice). The rest of the method was straightforward: brown the meat and set aside, soften chopped onions, add other root vegetables (carrots and celeriac in this case), add the meat, top up with stock (just from an Oxo cube in this case) and some beer (my own Bitter Dog stout – turning out delicious), bring to the boil, cover and stick in a low oven for a few hours. Oh, and I put the trimmed bone back in, to benefit from that rendering down a bit.

It actually cooked quicker than I expected. In the 150°C oven, we got it in by 3pm before popping out and it was getting ready by the time we got back, not long after 5pm. I let it finish off uncovered in the oven while I cooked some mashed potatoes. It wasn’t a spicy, exotic meal but very satisfying and I think I will definitely go for the shin again.