· James Torr · Personal · 2 min read
More waste meat stuff.
More waste meat stuff. The average butcher throws away most of their pork bones and will be happy to give you a bag or two for free, happier if you buy some other stuff from them. Beef and chicken tend to be more in demand, and you’ll sometimes pay a little for them. Making the broth is a little more involved than chicken bone broth, but worth the effort. Pressure cooker I’d say is a must, 18hr stove time is reduced to 3. The Kuhn Rikons (pictured) are very good next gen valve (quiet) gas models, and can be found for about half retail if you keep an eye on eBay.
Random visit to a butchers near Lewes called Turner’s and they had a ton of bones (and a head!) for me. Managed to get them into my 2 pressure cookers (8 + 6l) apart from the head (minus the jaw), so that’s running today. I yielded just a bit over 8 litres of really jellied stock. Check out the pic in the fridge, one of the containers is on its side!
Basic procedure is: soak in water overnight, drain, Blanche for 15 mins, removing scum, drain, clean/rinse bones, cover with water (no more) and pressure cook for 3hrs. You can add aromatics (onions, leeks) or umami bits (niboshi, shitake) for a final 10 mins under pressure (release, add bits, close and resume).
As I want full extraction, I tend to go for blending the broth after cooking. Most bones will just disintegrate after 3hrs in a pressure cooker. The femurs don’t, they’re the front leg and have to support the weight of the animal. I removed them and lightly blended the rest with an immersion blender. I used a nylon bag (nut milk strainer) and poured the stock through this. I tied a knot in the top of the bag and left with a weight on top inside a strainer over the clean stock receptacle. Once the bag felt fairly solid, the blended bones went into the garden as fertilizer. Femurs out front for the local foxes.
Finally, the finished stock is added to bulk containers and left overnight to solidify. The fat does separate. Quite a lot there, if you don’t want fatty broth, you shouldn’t be making pork broth. I’ll bag/box this up into 450-500g portions for ramen/soup and other kitchen duties, then freeze. It’ll keep very well.
