Braised Osso Buco with Lovage and Carrots in a Bone Broth Tomato Sauce
I’ve joined forces again with my favourite local regenerative farm, Wild Meadows Farm, to bring you this simple, yet foundational recipe for osso buco. This classic dish originated in Italy with its fork tender, fall-off-the-bone goodness braised for hours in wine and brothy tomato sauce, flavoured with simple, yet heady aromatics and seasonal vegetables. I’ve adapted the recipe to the region I currently live in, with foods grown and raised at latitude 43.9 to create a quantum dance within my cells, body immediately feeling at home.
It’s the perfect menstrual supportive fertility food, grounding and regeneratively, sustainably sourced. Ossibuchi literally translates to “bone marrow”, or “holes in the bone”, such an incredibly nutrient-dense and simple way to help get your complete whole food primal nourishment building blocks in while reducing the need for external inputs like dentist visits. I can nearly guarantee that it’ll make you feel great.
Beef shanks have quickly become one of my favourite cuts of meat due to their easy-to-make, full spectrum, nutrient-dense, nose-to-tail potential. You’ve got the muscle meat and the bone marrow all in one proverbial package, and if you include some gelatinous homemade bone broth that has been simmered over 2 days, you’ve got the glycine to balance out the methionine from the muscle meat, plus the nutrients, vitamins and minerals from the vegetables and herbs on top of that. Feel free to pop in a small amount of organ meat during cooking for additional goodness (preferably from the same kind of animal)… you can bet Weston A. Price will be smiling from the grave.
Also, how good is the word braised?! Braising involves briefly browning the meat on both sides before adding to the stew for a slow simmered roast that enables the meat to fall off the bone, so tender that you could pull it apart with a fork. Remember to keep the bone marrow in the recipe when cooking, it’s the most nutritious, succulent part of the cut that can be scooped out and enjoyed with a little spoon.
How to make this braised osso buco with lovage, carrots and bone broth tomato sauce:
There are basically two parts to this osso buco recipe, and I highly recommend getting the first part (making the broth) done ahead of time. You could skip this first step and just use wild spring water as your liquid, but I really recommend including in a good amount of prepared homemade gelatinous bone broth in spring water, or at least a scoop of grass fed collagen/gelatin to melt into the sauce to balance out the nutritional profile of the osso buco. A couple of frozen broth cubes work great.
Click here for my 48-hour chaga bone broth recipe
- First, melt the tallow down until it turns into a slick of fat at the bottom of the pot. Sear each beef shank until browned on both sides.
- Sauté the onion, carrots and celery. Add the garlic, thyme and birch leaves. Season with sea salt and pepper.
- Pour in a splash of wine to deglaze the pot.
- Pour in the tomato sauce and bone broth, stir to combine then add the shanks back in. Bring the mixture to a boil, then immediately down to a simmer. Braise for 2-2 1/2 hours. Go for a walk.
- Add in the butter and stir until it melts nicely with the sauce. That’s it! Easy peasy. Serve with chopped garden parsley, lemon juice or zest, or gremolata. Consider olives, raw cheese, pickled onion, and/or a spoonful of sauerkraut as well.
As always, listen to your body and feel free to make substitutions with any ingredients mentioned for this osso buco. This is simply what works for me at the moment. Together let’s revive and reinvigorate the sacred connection to our food, land and our farmers with alive, nourishing, seasonal, healing foods for mind, body, and spirit.
If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, here are some other recipes you might enjoy:
- Grass Fed Pasture Raised Bison Striploin Roast
- Shawarma Rack of Lamb with Tahini Mustard Sauce, Toasted Dukkah, and Lemon Infused Olive Oil
- Roasted Grass Fed and Finished Bison Sirloin Steak
Special thanks to Mike and co. at Wild Meadows Farm. All thoughts are my own! Use code ROOTTOSKY for $10 off your first order at Wild Meadows Farm. Ships Ontario-wide.
If you tried this Braised Osso Buco with Lovage and Carrots in a Bone Broth Tomato Sauce or any other recipe on this blog, let me know how you liked it by leaving a comment below. Be sure to follow along for more inspiration at Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.
Braised Osso Buco with Lovage and Carrots in a Bone Broth Tomato Sauce
Equipment
- wooden spoon
- plate
- large soup pot or Dutch oven
Ingredients
- 3-4 Wild Meadows Farm grass fed and grass finished, regeneratively pasture raised beef shanks, thawed (about 2-3 pounds)
- 2 tbsp Wild Meadows Farm grass fed and finished beef tallow chunks
- 1 medium organic onion, sliced into half rings
- 2 medium organic carrots, finely diced
- 2 stalks organic lovage, finely diced (I used a mixture of lovage and celery stalks)
- 5 sprigs organic thyme
- 4 cloves organic garlic, minced
- 2 wild birch or organic bay leaves
- sea salt and organic black pepper, to taste
- 1/2 cup (about a splash) biodynamic red wine or 1 tbsp organic balsamic vinegar
- 1 glass jar crushed organic tomato (passata) sauce (about 540 mL) or whole peeled and deseeded organic tomatoes
- 1/2 cup homemade grass fed and finished regeneratively pasture raised beef bone broth (or an equal amount of frozen broth cubes) a properly gelatinous bone broth will help improve the thickening and flavour of the sauce
- 1 tbsp grass fed raw butter
- minced organic garden parsley, lemon rind or gremolata, to garnish
Instructions
- Season the thawed beef shanks on both sides with a bit of sea salt and black pepper, and set aside. Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Drop in 1 tbsp of the beef tallow and stir it around until it melts in the pot and covers the bottom with a slick of fat. Sear each beef shank for 5 minutes on each side or until browned, working in batches as to not overcrowd the pot. Remove and set all shanks aside on a plate. It’s fine if they’re not totally cooked through, as they will be added back in later to be completely braised.
- Lower the heat to medium-low. Sauté the onion, carrots and celery until onion is translucent and vegetables start to become tender and browned, about 5-6 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme and birch leaves, and continue stirring for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Season with sea salt and pepper.
- Pour in a splash of wine to deglaze the pot, then reduce for about 3 minutes. Scrape up any brown bits (fond) at the bottom with your wooden spoon.
- Pour in the tomato sauce and bone broth, stir to combine then add the shanks back in, covering them with the sauce. Bring the mixture to a boil, then immediately down to a simmer. Cover the pot fully, and braise for 2-2 1/2 hours. Go for a walk.
- Add in the butter and stir until it melts nicely with the sauce. That's it! Easy peasy. Serve with chopped garden parsley, lemon juice or zest, or gremolata (a mixture of garlic, parsley and lemon). Consider olives, raw cheese, pickled onion, and/or a spoonful of sauerkraut as well.
Notes
- As usual, it’s very important to go with grass fed and finished, ethically and regeneratively sun and pasture raised meat, especially when it comes to bones, since bones store any heavy metal contamination and energy over the animal’s lifetime. If your animal was exposed to GMO grains, unnatural feed, and an unnatural sad lifestyle indoors, raised in a typical factory farm, you can bet that you’ll be extracting those stored neurotoxins and sadness in your osso buco and simmered broth. Like supports like. Healthy, happy animals produce nutrient dense food, especially for fertility. Your food is only as healthy for you as the health of the soil. Ancestral foods are sustainable to your body and the land.
- I also recommend using local moose or even caribou shanks if you can find them.
- This dish goes really well with some kind of cooked organic ancient grain, organic sourdough, zucchini noodles, mashed potatoes, or even grass fed raw cheese.
- Don’t forget to eat the bone marrow! This was a highly valued staple in traditional human diets that has experienced a resurgence in current post-industrial, pro-metabolic nutrition and wild living movements. Muscle meat was actually often fed to the dogs, but in today’s depleted context I recommend splitting it between the both of you.
- It may no longer be considered an osso buco, but feel free to play around with other cuts of stewing meats and seasonal veggies. For veggies, here I actually used a mix of both local permaculturally grown lovage and celery; you could use one or the other, or anything else that’ll play a similar role to basic celery.
- I used a small splash of local biodynamic red wine from Prince Edward County in this recipe to deglaze and scrape the fond, but you could use a tiny splash (1 tbsp) of balsamic vinegar, or none at all. I have actually come to prefer the flavour dimension that organic balsamic vinegar brings to tomato sauces. Use whatever you have on hand.
- Ancient wisdom and experience tells us that breaking cycles of suffering includes nourishing with locally sun grown and raised foods, but what’s even more important is your light environment from day to day. Enjoy this recipe outdoors under full spectrum sunlight in minimal clothing with a calm and relaxed body to max out the digestive and assimilative process, as well as flavour.
- A lot of recipes call for tying twine around the outer edges of the shanks to hold them together, but I find that it’s not worth the effort and they stay intact throughout the cooking process anyway, ready to be effortlessly pulled apart once cooked.
