Thor’s Hammer

Against a whitewashed wood background, a raw Thor’s Hammer beef shank with a frenched bone is surrounded by a white bowl of black peppercorns, half an onion, loose black peppercorns, and rosemary sprigs.

Wielding Thor’s Hammer

This showstopping beef shank deserves a starring role on your menu.

If ever there was dish guaranteed to turn heads in a restaurant dining room, it’s the hefty beef shank we call “Thor’s Hammer.”

This showstopper cut of Irish Nature Beef can weigh anywhere from 5 to 7.5 lbs.  Though we have spent decades as a wholesale meat supplier to restaurants, we certainly hadn’t come across a beef shank like Thor’s Hammer before. We suspected our customers hadn’t either, so we set our test kitchen chef on a mission to determine the best ways to cook it and save you from a lot of trial and error.

BRAISING IS BEST

It’s possible to smoke or roast Thor’s Hammer, but braising gave us the best results: tender, moist, succulent meat that falls easily from the bone. If you roast Thor’s Hammer, low and slow is the way to go. Whether you braise or roast, your reward is not only robustly flavored meat but also marrow-filled bones. The marrow that leaches into the braising liquid makes it a perfect base for Bordelaise sauce. Roasted bones can be used to bolster stock or demi-glace.

Fingers steady a raw, seasoned Thor’s Hammer beef shank as it is seared in a black cast iron skillet. A seared Thor’s Hammer beef shank with aluminum foil wrapping its bone, sits on its side in a rectangular silver pan half full of braising liquid.

Pro tips For braising Thor's Hammer:

  1. Truss to maintain a rounded shape
  2. Stand the shank upright in a pot large enough to hold enough liquid to completely submerge the meat. We found submerging the meat fully in liquid created the best result. Not doing so resulted in meat that was inconsistent in texture and moisture content and required basting to mitigate the dryness. Upright cooking allowed the shanks to retain a uniformly rounded shape and it makes marrow extraction easier. Shanks cooked on their sides required turning. Even when completely submerged in liquid, results were inconsistent; some areas were dry while others were perfect.
  3. Cover the pan completely in foil. Wrap the bone in foil, too, for added protection.
  4. Braise in a convection oven at 300°F for 4.5-5 hours until fully tender. Begin testing for tenderness at 4 hours. Cooking too long causes the various muscles to separate, affecting the finished presentation. Allow to cool in braising liquid.

To a base of beef stock add:

Red wine, mirepoix, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, rosemary, peppercorn & tomato paste

OR

Lemongrass, garlic, ginger & onion

About Irish Nature Beef

Thor’s Hammer is made from ultra-tender, pasture-raised Irish Nature beef, the most sustainable, humanely treated, grain-fed beef for foodservice you can buy. Sourced from a network of small farms throughout Ireland, Irish Nature Beef is raised free range on a diverse, grain-enhanced grass-based diet that naturally increases marbling & flavor without feedlot fattening. No sub-therapeutic antibiotics or growth promotants are ever used.

Irish Nature Beef benefits from a unique tenderization process and longer-than-customary aging time that increases tenderness & develops flavor. ABP Ireland, producer of Irish Nature Beef, has won numerous gold medals annually in the prestigious World Steak Challenge. More than 200 Michelin-starred restaurants buy beef produced by ABP Ireland.

A green patchwork of Irish pastures is bordered by stands of trees that cast shadows across the grass.

Naturally Nurtured & Nourished

Irish Nature Beef is pasture-raised on some 28,000 farms across Ireland. All beef cattle start out eating grass and Ireland has an abundance of it. Irish beef cattle consume a mix of grass and grains throughout their lives. The country’s temperate climate allows for pasture grazing most of the year, save for a couple of months when the ground is too sodden. Year-round, their diet includes a mix of stored grass and locally milled grains, more than three quarters of it a nourishing mix of barley and soy. All told, over their life span, the feed ratio is about 70% pasture grass, 20% stored grass, and 10% variety of grains. This naturally diverse diet enhances flavor of Irish Nature beef and contributes to its tenderness.

Irish farmers adhere to the Five Freedoms of animal welfare, adopted by the European Union, and acknowledged globally as the gold standard: freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom to express normal and natural behaviors; and freedom from fear and distress.

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Innovative In the Abattoir

Stress raises an animal’s pH and that affects flavor and tenderness. When Irish Nature beef cattle leave their pastoral life on the farm, they aren’t confined to crowded feedlots for fattening the way commodity beef is. To make the transition to the abattoir as stress-free as possible, they pass through a calming environment, a system of lairage based on techniques approved by renowned animal welfare expert Dr. Temple Grandin.

A unique, Ultra-Tender process, honed for more than three decades, ensures that Irish Nature beef is tender every time. The innovative method includes:

Hanging

  • From the hip, or aitch bone, not the Achilles tendon.
  • Legs perpendicular to the body.
  • Minimizes contraction at the onset of rigor mortis.

Controlled
Hyper-stretching

  • Promotes tenderness by furthering the breakdown of muscle fibers, especially in the hindquarters & loin.

Electrical Stimulation

  • Aids tenderness by rapidly converting glycogen to lactate, thus speeding onset of rigor & stabilizing the meat faster.
  • Precisely regulated to achieve the ideal pH level of 5.7 or less for eating quality.

Gradual chilling

  • Temperature drops slowly over a 48-hour period
  • Prevents cold shortening, muscle constriction that toughens meat.

Fabricated For Peak Performance

Irish Nature Beef is the most cleanly butchered wholesale beef you can buy. Most cuts require minimal additional labor. Steak-ready subprimals for foodservice can reduce waste and lower your labor and food costs. Innovative cuts like Thor’s Hammer give you an edge on the competition.
On a white kitchen counter, with knives hanging on the wall in the background and chopped green herbs in the foreground, a raw Thor’s Hammer beef shank sits upright on a rectangular silver sheet pan.
Against a background of white subway tiles, a cooked Thor’s Hammer beef shank sits upright in a round, two-handled pan surrounded by mixed vegetables as a hand pours sauce from a white pitcher.

Minimized Environmental Impact

Parent company ABP is focused on sustainability. Recognized as a world leader in measuring, managing & reducing their environmental impact, ABP was the first global company to achieve quadruple certification from the Carbon Trust.

ABP Ireland, producer of Irish Nature Beef, was founded in 1954. Its eight locations throughout Ireland are 100% powered by renewable energy sources and send zero waste to landfills. They are a founding member of Origin Green, a pioneering food & drink sustainability program in Ireland uniting government, the private sector & the entire supply chain. A company-wide “Nurture Nature” program fosters biodiversity & improves natural habitats. Other conservation efforts support ecosystems under threat in Ireland, including woodlands, wetlands, ponds, and meadows.

Throughout all divisions, ABP pursues sustainability from farm to abattoir to customer. For example:

  • Supporting farmers by sharing research & expert input on improving genetics, growth rates, food conversion, animal welfare, and grassland management.
  • Establishing demonstration farms to conduct research & development on reducing methane gas emissions.
  • Building the world’s first carbon-neutral abattoir.
  • Providing renewable energy solutions to more than 50,000 restaurant and food service establishments in the U.K. and Ireland.
Learn More About Irish Nature Beef >

About Marx Foodservice

Marx Foodservice is a wholesale meat distributor with more than 20 years of experience. As a specialty meat supplier to restaurants and a foodservice distributor, we seek out only the finest meats and seafood. Our products are humanely raised or wild caught with the highest standards of animal welfare and the least environmental impact possible. We scour the world to find exceptional wholesale meats and seafood you won’t find anywhere else. In addition to ultra-tender Irish Nature Beef, we offer superior grass-fed Angus beef from Silver Fern Farms and grain-fed Ocean Beef, both from New Zealand. All our wholesale beef for restaurants is expertly butchered for consistency and the highest yields. We deliver by van in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington states, and nationwide via FedEx.