Whether you’re making a bone broth recipe, homemade stock, or want to try eating bone marrow, properly roasted bones are important for quality. Find out the benefits of roasting bones and how to roast bones for each type of use!
This post was updated on July 1, 2019 with new content for your enjoyment.
As we begin looking at the different building blocks of sauces, let’s focus on how to roast bones. This is great if you want to take up drinking bone broth, want to make a thick and rich brown stock, or you want to start eating health-promoting marrow.
What Are The Benefits of Roasting Bones?
There are many different reasons for roasting bones, both for your stock/broth and for your health.
- Stock and/or Bone Broth Benefits
- Flavor. Roasting your bones helps to create a deeper, fuller, and richer flavor from the caramelizing of the meat and marrow.
- Gelatin. The naturally existing collagen and connective tissue in the bones helps make your stock thick and gelatinous. When you add acid to your bones (usually from brushing them with tomato paste) it helps to draw out even more of the collagen to make an even thicker stock. This is great if you plan to reduce it into a demi-glace.
- Nutrients. As the bones are boiled into the bone broth or stock, it melts in the marrow; this may release many of the marrow’s health benefits (although this is up for debate as there isn’t a lot of scientific backing for it. If you would like to read more, check out this article from NPR).
- Health
- The marrow in bones is not just for food snobs or your dogs; it is packed with lots of quality vitamins and minerals, stem cells, and amino acids.
- Marrow is believed to reduce inflammation (especially in the GI tract), promote self-healing, improved brain function, healthy skin, and help prevent and/or heal cancer.
- Marrow is high in healthy fats and is good for promoting a longer lasting “full” feeling after eating.
Not all bones are equal! Knowing how to roast bones properly can maximize the health benefits. It’s also important to choose bones that have a higher amount of marrow and are from animals that are raised humanely and organically.
How To Roast Bones for Bone Broth or Stock
Properly roasted bones give additional flavor and body to your bone broth or stock. If I could give you my number one trick for success, it is this!
- Preheat your oven to 425°F.
- Place bones in a heavy bottomed deep roasting pan, or on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and roast in the oven for about 30 minutes. You want the bones to be a darker color but not burn any residual meat.
- If desired: remove the bones from the oven, brush them with tomato paste and return them to the oven for an additional 10 minutes.*
*The acid in the tomato paste helps dissolve the connective tissue in the bones. It also adds a little extra flavor.
How to Roast Bones for Marrow
When it comes to eating marrow, the best bones for the job come from beef or veal. You can get marrow bones pretty easily from your butcher (and usually very cheap) and they can leave them whole or cut them in half. Either will work wonderfully, but if you get the split bones your cooking time may vary depending on how thick they are. However, this does make it easier to get the marrow out
You want your marrow to be loose and give a little, but make sure to remove it from the oven before it begins to cook away.
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Place your bones vertically on a parchment paper lined sheet pan and sprinkle them lightly with salt.
- Place in the oven and roast for 15 minutes.
- Remove the bones from the oven and scoop out the marrow using a spoon or butter knife.
- Serve as desired: on grilled bread, in a compound butter, with garlic and caramelized onions, with parsley and lemon, straight out of the bone – whatever strikes your fancy.
Practice Makes Perfect
Now that you know how to roast bones, put it to good use. Here are some recipes I recommend trying:
- Rich & Flavorful Brown Stock (This works for beef stock, chicken broth, etc…)
- Espagnole Mother Sauce
Thanks for stopping by!
Happy Cooking! 🙂
My husband and I love pho, so this is perfect. I don’t eat dairy, and I remember finding articles saying that bone marrow broths are a great source of calcium. I will definitely loop back to this post when we want to cook it. Thanks!
I’m totally with you on the pho! If you want to get even more calcium out of your broth, add in veggies for the final hour of cooking – specifically leeks, fennel, celery, and carrots – all of which will boost the amount of calcium in your broth and give it a little extra flavor! Thanks for commenting and sharing, Danielle! 🙂
Thanks for sharing this. If I don’t scoop out the marrow and eat, will I still get the benefits and nutrients if i make a broth? Should I scoop out the marrow and put it in the broth? Or will the simmering for many hours get the marrow into the broth without scooping it out? Thank you, obviously I am new to bones and bone broths 😉
Hi Janet! I’m so glad you stopped by!
You will absolutely still gain the benefits and nutrients of the marrow by making broth because the marrow will dissolve into the broth as it simmers. I sometimes find that I don’t stay as full for as long by drinking the broth versus eating the marrow, but that’s personal experience and will vary for everyone.
Send me a photo when you make your bone broth and let me know how it goes! 🙂
Hi
I was making broth from another online recipe and they suggested roasting the bones even if they are already cooked. I had left over thigh bones from chicken drumsticks I had already roasted, and so I took this advice and put them in the oven on 400 a second time on their own for 30 min. When I took them out they seemed brittle and inside some that were cut in half the marrow looked dry. Did I ruin them? Will These twice-roasted bones still make gelatinous collagen rich bone broth? Or did I kill all the nutrients? I have made bone broth before from left over roasted chicken bones but never roasted them a second time beforehand. Thanks!
Hi Kat!
Roasting the bones after they are cooked greatly depends on the way they were cooked. The desire with roasting them is to get caramelization on the bones to deepen the flavor. If the way your chicken is cooked already does that then it isn’t super necessary. If however, the bones didn’t get any direct exposure to heat, then the other site is right and roasting it a second time boosts flavor.
It sounds to me like you may have just roasted them a bit too long. When you roast something that you want the outside to cook fast while preserving the inside, you want a high temperature for a short period of time. The brittle, possibly over-roasted bones won’t create a worthless broth, but it may be a bit thinner and lacking a bit of the fat; but by no means is it a lost cause. Give it a shot going through with it and see what it’s like, if you aren’t happy with it, save it for later and when you’re ready to make your next batch, make a how to make a double stock.. Essentially, this is making bone broth a second time using the broth from the brittle bones instead of water. This should fix it up easily.
I hope this helps! Let me know how it goes!
Mackenzie
Hi Mack!
I’m curious do you add anything to the bones when you are roasting them? or just let them cook on their own?
Thanks!
Hi Brian! Thanks for stopping by!
You don’t need to add anything to the bones if you don’t want to. If you would like, you can brush some tomato paste on the bones before roasting and this will break down the connective tissue as well as provide a flavor boost. Depending on what you are doing with the bones though, the roasted tomato flavor may not be desired.
If you are turning the bones into a stock afterwards (like THIS ONE), your flavors will get added in during the stock making process.
I hope this helps. I can’t wait to hear how it goes for you!
-Mackenzie
Thank you for your tips to roast bones. Did this, ate the marrow with salt, pepper, parsley and lemon mmmm. Like a savoury soft pudding. I then used the bones for broth, simmering with vegetable both and water. Froze it, and use to drink cold or add to soups. The quality of the bones is key, from local farm and/or good butcher. Great eating and drinking with benefits. So thankful for sustainable traditional farming and the hard work and devotion to good husbandry for the animals in their care!
That sounds like a perfect way to enjoy the marrow and utilize the bones to their fullest extent! I’m so glad you love it!
Mack I cannot thank you enough for this comprehensive lesson on making stock! I was always disappointed in my results before, but now I make rich, flavoursome stock to be proud of. I love all the knowledge you so generously shared about WHY each step or tip is important. Thank you
June
Oh June, I cannot express how much I loved seeing this. Comments like these are exactly why I do this. Thank you, and cheers to excellent stock! 🙂
Mackenzie
We are making our very first batch today. Its interesting about he marrow. My dad use to suck the marrow out of the chicken bones after eating the chicken. None of us ever understood why and I’m not sure he did either. I chose this method over all the others read because it seems to really address getting the maximum benefits out of the whole process. Most of all the others were having it cook in 2 hours.. Tonight we try the results. Thank you for posting this..
I had family who did that as well. I always just assumed it was a complete utilization thing, but I don’t really know if they knew why the did it either.
I can’t wait to hear how it turns out, Jon! Please come back and let me know! 🙂
Should you wash/parboil bones before or after roasting?
Thank you in advance!
Hi Merry,
If you are roasting the bones for marrow, you can give them a quick scrub before roasting to remove any potential issues. If you are using them for stock or broth, no washing is necessary as any impurities will rise to the surface to be skimmed off during the simmering. I wouldn’t scrub them too hard though because some of the goodies that impart flavor are on the bone before roasting. Just make sure to pat them dry before roasting. I hope that helps. Happy cooking!
Mackenzie
I had read that you should blanch them before roasting them to make a stock. Curious if this is correct and also I wanted to know if I should soak bones in ACV before roasting??
Hi Michelle! Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and ask your question. Questions like these are my favorite.
As for blanching, that isn’t necessary as long as you skim the stuff that rises to the top away. The idea behind blanching is to remove “impurities”, but those will float to the surface regardless, so it mostly just creates an extra step. In fact, the extra moisture that comes from blanching the bones inhibits browning during roasting and lead to less flavor. I have an extremely detailed five part series on making an excellent stock that goes into more detail about that. (You can find part one HERE.)
As for the apple cider vinegar soak, it depends on what your purpose for it is. If your purpose it to clean the bones, it isn’t necessary because those same impurities rise to the top and get skimmed out. If, however, the purpose is to create an acid for intensifying flavor, apple cider vinegar makes a fun alternative to tomato paste. It won’t be as potent as tomato paste, or create the same depth of flavor, but can be really nice is a lighter stock or broth.
I hope this answers your questions. Please let me know if you have more. 🙂
Happy Cooking!
Mackenzie
Great Information this definitely helps motivate Me to finally start cooking w/broth🙂
I love hearing that, Lu. Please come back and let me know how it ends up!
Happy Cooking!
Mackenzie
I just came across this and found out things I didn’t yet know! Thank you! The tomato paste is a new one for me. So, do you baste the bones with the tomato paste before roasting? Once you put the bones in water to simmer, won’t that wash off the tomato paste or does that not matter? I currently use ACV and have been happy with the deep flavor I get (I use a slow cooker for 24-30 hours) ,but I really like learning new and improved ways to get the most flavor and health benefits!
Hi Joe!
Yes, you baste the bones before roasting. The acid in the ACV does the same thing as the tomato paste as far as how it encourages the browning of the bones. The tomato paste will give it a slightly deeper flavor than the apple cider vinegar which is a little brighter. But it all really depends on what you’re going for. It’s not a big deal that the paste washes into the water, it will flavor the broth a little bit more.
Hope that helps! Happy Cooking! 🙂
Mackenzie