We picked up a beautiful pork shoulder from Gipps Street Butchery and on a whim I asked for some marrow bones as a lunch time treat, plus there was a recipe from the Michael Ruhlman website I was keen to try out.
Well firstly the lunch time treat is dead simple, grill some bread, chop up capers with parsley, olive oil and a dash of lemon juice, spoon out some pickled red onion (recipe here).
Put the bones on a roasting pan and put in a very hot oven (230°C) for about 20 minutes.
Serve, enjoy and be prepared for a mess.
The other lot of of bones got prepared entirely differently, I'll cover the prep in this post and the cooking in part 2.
Soak the bone in warm water for 15 minutes to soften the fat and make it easier to extract the marrow. Sections from the middle of the bone work best, avoid bone that is near a joint.
Now the messy bit, pushing the marrow out. There will be a big and small end of the marrow, at the small end apply some pressure and with luck the marrow should slide out, if it doesn't you'll have to use a knife or other utensil to slide up the edges of the bone to dislodge the marrow.
Prepare a brine, I used a 5% salt to water mix (1 litre of water & 50 grams of salt).
Soak the marrow in the brine for a couple of days to draw out the blood. You'll need to change the brine a couple of times a day.
Continue to part 2.
