If you are a fan of the Cooking Inside the Lines Facebook page, you might have seen my grumblings with the Slow Cooker recipes section from Food and Wine. I tried the Slow Cooker Puerto Rican Chicken in Green Sauce and Slow Cooker Ham Hock and Chickpea Stew and let’s just say former was bland and blah and the latter was simply inedible. It’s rare that I try recipes that we actually can’t even think to stomach to eat. To me these were just poor by recipe design and seemed to lack a lot of flavor – and in a slow cooker to boot…ouch! When I saw that I had chosen yet another one of the recipes from this section, Slow Cooker Lamb Shanks with Lemon, Dill and Feta, I almost decided to not even try. But, since I like to stick to my menu plan I forged ahead. Well thank goodness that I did lambs because this was delicious! YAY!

What I think worked for this recipe, compared to the others, was you seared the shanks before putting them in the slow cooker and finished it of with fresh ingredients such as dill and more lemon juice to freshen it up. A word to the wise, since you place whole lemon slices in the slow cooker they take on a preserved lemon taste. I’m kind of  fan of this flavor, David likes it better, but we both agree that it can be polarizing. We would recommend to remove unless you and your fellow diners lurve preserved lemons. I served this on top of orzo and sauteed fresh spinach with garlic that was finished off with a little red wine vinegar. Also, if you think you are not a lamb fan, shanks are an easy way to turn non-believers into believers. They.are.delicious. I also like this dish because it was hearty enough for a cold winter night but had a certain brightness to it with the fresh dill, lemon and feta; a little bit of spring in your winter dish.

Make this today lambs!