If you’ve been afraid to try roasted bone marrow, I promise that you will love this recipe.
It comes (only slightly modified) from Chef Fergus Henderson, the guy who started this whole trend of nose-to-tail eating. Okay, he didn’t start it — nose-to-tail eating has been around for thousands of years. He reinvigorated it.
Enough with the skinless, boneless chicken breasts shrink-wrapped in plastic! Bring on the bones, the glands and the organs, the skin and the feet. Bring on the heads and tails and intestines! If you’re scared to try these parts, it’s time to man up, people!
Bone marrow is an easy way to get more organ meats into your diet. It’s the best starter food for those of you chickens out there.
Besides that, bone marrow is delicious! I heard someone call it “meat butter”. It’s a savory blast of umami that melts like, well, like butter, in your mouth.
Why Organ Meats?
Why would you want to get more organ meats into your diet? Because they are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. Organ meats contain 10-100 times more vitamins and minerals than muscle meats.
Every time I meet someone with perfectly white, straight piano-key teeth who grew up in a traditional culture (such as a village in Mexico or Honduras or Russia), I always ask them what they grew up eating. They always say organ meats. They usually say they ate organ meats a few times a week. How often do you eat organ meats at your house?
Dr. Weston Price writes about the native American Indians and how they prized bone marrow for the nutrition in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:
For the Indians living inside the Rocky Mountain Range in the far North of Canada, the successful nutrition for nine months of the year was largely limited to wild game, chiefly moose and caribou. During the summer months the Indians were able to use growing plants. During the winter some use was made of bark and buds of trees. I found the Indians putting great emphasis upon the eating of the organs of the animals, including the wall of parts of the digestive tract. Much of the muscle meat of the animals was fed to the dogs. It is important that skeletons are rarely found where large game animals have been slaughtered by the Indians of the North. The skeletal remains are found as piles of finely broken bone chips or splinters that have been cracked up to obtain as much as possible of the marrow and nutritive qualities of the bones. These Indians obtain their fat-soluble vitamins and also most of their minerals from the organs of the animals. An important part of the nutrition of the children consisted in various preparations of bone marrow, both as a substitute for milk and as a special dietary ration.
For more delicious organ meat recipes from Chef Fergus, you simply must buy his book, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
Roasted Bone Marrow
Ingredients
Beef marrow bones, center-cut, 3 inches long, from grass-fed cows (8-12, or 3-4
pounds)
Parsley, fresh (1 bunch)
Shallots — or substitute 3-4 garlic cloves (2)
Capers (2 teaspoons)
Olive oil, good quality (1 1/2 tablespoons) — where to buy olive oil
Lemon juice (2 teaspoons)
Sea salt to taste — where to buy sea salt
Sourdough bread, or if you are grain-free, use coconut flour bread or almond bread (1 loaf) — where to buy coconut flour
Equipment
Foil, parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet or in ovenproof skillet
Mixing bowl
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Rinse and coarsely chop parsley (discarding stems). Peel and thinly slice shallots.
3. Combine chopped parsley, sliced shallots and capers in small mixing bowl. Set aside.
4. Put bones, cut side up, on foil-, parchment- or Silpat-lined baking sheet or in ovenproof skillet. 5. Cook until marrow is soft and begins to separate from the bone, about 10-15 minutes. (Stop before marrow begins to leak out.)
6. Just before bones are ready, whisk together olive oil and lemon juice and drizzle dressing over parsley mixture until leaves are just coated.
7. Slice the bread and toast for a few minutes in the oven.
9. Put roasted bones, parsley salad, salt and toast on a large plate. To serve, scoop out marrow, spread on toast, sprinkle with salt and top with parsley salad.
Don’t forget to save the bones and use them to make beef stock! Click here for my recipe. (If you’re not ready to make stock right away, toss the bones in a freezer bag until you’re ready to use them.)
Photo Credit Sifu Renka, on Flickr
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
We eat this all the time, only with garlic instead of capers. I spread it on the bread and toast it lightly and call it garlic bread, my organ phobic husband and teens love it and don’t even realize what it is! Then I toss the leftover bones into a beef broth. Delish!!
I have substituted garlic for the shallots
Today I had some bone marrow on toast from the bones I made my beef stock with overnight!
yes, in Russia bones are very popular, i remember my dad using a spoon to tap on a bone from the borscht my mom made to get all the goody marrow out!
I have always loved marrow, even as a kid. Knowing that it’s good for you reinforces my belief of eating what you like – like full strength milk and butter from pasture raised cows, livers, etc. – your body is telling you what’s good for you!
Thank you so much for this, Ann Marie! I have some marrow bones (from a grass fed cow that lived just upstate) in my freezer just waiting for me to eat them! I will refer to this recipe when the time comes to roast them and savor the yummy meat butter within.
I JUST bought that book! In fact, Amazon sent me the shipping notification an hour ago
I tend to devour the crispy bits of roasted meat on my stock bones on their way from the oven to the slow cooker – not much of a stretch to add “bone butter” to that!
is marrow considered organ meat? i’m confused!
oh, and oddly enough, i’m roasting 15lbs of marrow bones right now!
Bone marrow has always been one of my favorite food! the taste is uncomparable
I was wondering, can I make beef broth with the bones afterwards ? I’m a student, so I live on a restricted budget and I want to use every edible material I have to its fullest potential.
(sorry for my poor english, I speak french!)
Thanks for taking time to put up so much good info on your blog.
Je suis désolé! I should have added that to the post.
Oui! Save the bones and use them to make bone broth.
I’ve been wondering if bone marrow from non-grass-fed beef is still healthy? I have some soup bones in the freezer, but the thought of all the antibiotics and hormones is keeping them in the freezer. Is it still better than nothing? Or should I throw them out and look harder for a local farmer with grass-fed beef (or send my husband out hunting for venison)? Thanks for writing this blog! I’m new to “real food” though we’ve been doing “healthier” food for a number of years, and I’m learning a lot.
I somehow missed this post last week but I roasted marrow bones for stock a few days ago and this is the first time that I scraped out the marrow and saved it!
I’ve been adding it to dishes all week and no one’s been the wiser. I feel great about getting that extra nutritional boost into my family. And, really, the marrow is delicious!
I had a friend who would eat all of the ligaments, cartilage, and bones on the chicken. There was very little that he left behind.
I came across this post while researching roasted bone marrow. Yum! Bone marrow and organ meats are the best. Nice work!
I made this for dinner tonight! Yummm!! But some parts of the inner parts of the marrow were a little pink. Is that still OK to eat?
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