“I went to the woods because… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”
- Thoreau
Recently, we were given the bones of a large, healthy cow, and I knew it was time to enact a dream that I have had for a while now – rendered bone marrow. Bone marrow is pretty much mineral rich fat, traditionally wherever cultures depended on larger mammals for food, they prized bone marrow as an essential source of nourishment. Marrow can be consumed as bone broths, the bones broken open and simmered gently for a long period, it can be eaten raw – straight out of the bone, and if you have enough of it, it can be rendered for storage just like any other animal fat. Traditionally, pemmican consisted of dried, pulverized meat stuck together by rendered marrow fat.
For the uninitiated, what I mean by ‘rendering’, is heating tissue fat until the oil liquifies and separates from the proteins. The best example of this process is bacon – when you cook bacon, the bacon grease left over is rendered fat, it was seperated from the protien (bacon) through heating.
Most of the marrow lies inside the ‘marrow bones’ – long shaft like bones of that make up the front and hind legs (femur, ulna, all those shafts..). Ribs, shoulder blades and the spine do not (usually) have extractable chunks of marrow in them. For rendering, we smashed the marrow bones open, and took all the greasy chunks out…
At this point, the raw marrow is absolutely amazing! Apparently it contains stem cells, crazy nourishing growth hormones, no doubt eating it raw is the most amazing. We wanted to render it at the lowest heat possible, so we chose the ‘wet’ rendering process, putting all the marrow in a pot, covering it with water, bringing it to a low simmer for quite a while (it was on the woodstove, maybe 3 hrs very low heat?), then letting it cool overnight.
Raw marrow, ready to be covered with water and gently heated (rendered)
The oil seperates from the water, rises to the top and solidifies. It is then skimmed off, and gently heated in another pot just enough to liquefy and evaporate some of the excess moisture that might be kicking around. Pour the liquid oil into a jar, and, if you want my advice, store it uncovered, in a cool place. We store all of our rendered fats uncovered, and have noticed they do not go rancid or mold half as quickly as rendered fat that can’t breathe. If you have a fridge or a freezer, putting a lid on it likely won’t do any harm, but if it is at all warm, we just tie a cloth around the mouth of the jar and leave it at that. If creatures scavenging your food (mice, rats..) is an issue, then you will have to figure something else out. After skimming off the fat, we rendered what was left in the pot again, for just as long or longer, and after cooling go just as much fat as the first skimming.
The rendered marrow is amazing! Buttery yellow, rich, one of the best fats I have ever tasted (in my top 3).
Looks kind of like ghee - amazing stuff!
14 comments
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April 23, 2010 at 7:13 am
Coleus
Awesome post! That looks so tasty… I’ve had marrow and someone’s house before, but have never cracked or rendered some on my own. *jealous*
April 23, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Urban Scout
OMG. Looks delicious!
April 24, 2010 at 12:00 am
James
mmmmmmmm marrow.
I have to know, what are your top three fats?
May 28, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Ben
Hey Miles, et all
Laura gave me heads up on a disease transmitted through the neuro tissue ofsick wild animals (brains, spinal column). It seems that the authorities that are don’t really know, other than there’s a degenerative disease that wild animals can catch from domesticated animals. If you’re hunting it doesn’t seem to be a problem, as there are seemingly strange behaviors, but if you find an animal that’s another story. I haven’t been too worried in Ontario, as there are few deer farms, but I think alberta and maybe b.c. are more likely?
Does anybody know about or have experience with sick wild animals??
some sources are
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol10no6/03-1082.htm
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tse/tse.htm
http://www.mnr.gov.on.ca/en/Business/FW/2ColumnSubPage/STEL02_168762.html
peace,
Ben
May 30, 2010 at 9:44 pm
goingferal
I got a little scared about CWD a couple years ago. Found a roadkilled deer that was really emaciated, like wasting away. I researched it, seems like the bioregion we are living in is not within the known, present range. There is less intensive animal farming on this island than the main problem areas, even the couple fallow deer farms here are really small – less agribusiness. As far as telling if a roadkilled deer is healthy, if it has a healthy amount of muscle (cwd would effect that), and if it’s liver looks healthy are both decent indicators of overall health. If a deer ever seems sick or unhealthy, i don’t feel comfortable eating it.
I’m not really that worried about things like CWD here, though. When I start hearing real stories about animals / people near this region being effected, i will start to develop more elaborate precautions.
May 30, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Christine
Cool, here we go once again.
My dog keeps his teeth clean with marrow bones!
Never thought of trying one myself though.
Always keen to learn, thank you!
June 1, 2010 at 6:57 am
Diana
wow, this recipe is exactly what I was looking for to make home made pemmican. Now to find a butcher with bones… or learn how to hunt… probably butcher…
November 9, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Bushbaby
Awesome. I will try this!
I was helping a friend butcher a moose a couple of nights ago and asked him what you can do with the marrow, but he didn’t know – they’ve never used it, other than some bones for soup stock. I knew it was supposed to be good for you.
I’ve been vegetarian for 20 years but have just taken up hunting, so I’m trying to learn everything I can about meat and how to use every part of the animal. I’ll tell him when I’m out there hunting again this weekend.
The spinal column on the moose was huge as well, and quite a cool consistency. Do you do anything special with that, or the major arteries/veins?
November 1, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Foxfire
Bone (with marrow) broth is a great, nourishing comfort food of mine when ill. It’s nice to see that it’s making a comeback
January 28, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Jim
hey I’ve just got hold of some grass fed beef bones full of marrow and would love to be able to extract it whole like in this photo, but have no idea how. Should I smash the bones with a hammer, axe, or use a saw or what? Please let me know!
January 28, 2012 at 8:24 pm
goingferal
You could either use a hacksaw, a power saw or just manually crack them open with an appropriate tool (hammer, back of axe etc), then render!
January 28, 2012 at 10:10 pm
Jim
Hi again, ok I’ve just extracted the marrow from four large cow bones by cutting fracture points with a tenon saw then squeezing them in my heavy bench vice un til they crack open. All in all I ended up with less than a small bowl full of marrow. This is a laborious process and I don’t even think cracking the bones open is neccesary becuase I noticed with all 4 bones the marrow was only in the first 2-3 inches, which can easily be scooped out with a couple of appropriately shaped tools. What do you think?
January 28, 2012 at 10:12 pm
Jim
Also, I would like to know why you added water to that huge amount of marrow you managed to collect. Why not just very slowly heat the marrow in a cast iron pot until the marrow has melted?
February 17, 2012 at 9:53 pm
goingferal
yeah you could do that, also you can just saw the bones up and put water in w/ broken bones to wet-render. I took out the marrow to decrease bulk, and added water to render at a lower heat. Long shaft-like bones (ulna, tibia) are better suited to fat extraction than ‘knuckle’ bones.