Ingredient

Bone marrow

Marrow is the soft fatty tissue inside the long bones, and roasted it becomes rich, savoury and almost custardy — closer to a very good animal butter than to meat. It is cheap, easy and one of the most rewarding things a butcher can sell you.

Buying the bones

Canoe cut

Split lengthways so the marrow is exposed in a trough. Easiest to eat and easiest to over-render. Ask for this.

Cross cut

Sawn into rounds. Holds the marrow better and is harder to get out. Also what osso buco uses.

Which bones

Beef or veal femur and tibia. Veal marrow is milder and paler; beef is richer.

Quantity

Two or three cross-cut sections, or one canoe half, per person as a starter.

Preparation

Butchers will cut them to order. Sawing bone at home is not practical.

Roasting them

The main risk is that the marrow melts entirely and runs out of the bone.

1. Soak the bones in cold salted water for a few hours or overnight if you want a paler marrow. This draws out blood and is traditional rather than essential.
2. Dry them and season the exposed marrow well with salt.
3. Stand cross-cut bones upright on a tray; lay canoe-cut ones marrow side up.
4. Roast in a hot oven for fifteen to twenty minutes. Watch them from twelve.
5. They are ready when the marrow is soft and bubbling at the edges but still holding its shape. Pushed further it liquefies and runs.
6. Serve immediately, with toast, coarse salt and something sharp.

What to do with it

• Scooped onto toast with parsley salad, the St John treatment — flat-leaf parsley, shallot, capers and lemon. A modern British classic and the best version.
• Stirred into a risotto at the end, in place of some of the butter.
• Melted into a red wine sauce for steak, which enriches it enormously.
• Spread on a steak as it rests, so it melts over the top.
• In a dumpling or a stuffing, chopped raw and mixed through.
• Rendered and kept as a cooking fat, which is superb for roasting potatoes.
• In osso buco, where the marrow in the shin bone is scooped out and eaten with a small spoon.

What to serve with it

Marrow is almost entirely fat and it is extremely rich. Everything traditionally served alongside is doing the same job of cutting through it: acid, salt and something bitter or sharp.

Parsley and shallot dressed in lemon juice is the standard for good reason. Capers, cornichons, pickled onions, a sharp chutney or a mustardy salad all work.

Bread matters more than usual. Sourdough toasted hard gives something with enough structure and acidity to carry the fat, where a soft white roll simply goes greasy.

Common questions