Bone marrow butter

Bone marrow butter

We have been resting steaks wrapped in foil with seasoned olive oil and rosemary but we were looking to take this a step further.  Fortunately, when we called into “Charlotte’s Butchery” to pick up some aged ribeye steak, sitting next to the ribeye was a nice looking marrowbone so we had that wrapped too!   Bone marrow has a rich nutty flavour and delightfully compliments a good butter so a great opportunity to develop a rich ‘baste’ for some beautiful steak as you can see above!

At its simplest bone marrow butter is a mix of roast bone marrow and butter.  Some suggest ‘blitzing’ the two major ingredients but we wanted to leave the cooked marrow a little more granular and visible in the butter.  Many recipes add chopped herbs or sautéed shallots but we decided to keep this very simple.

This could easily be done in a conventional oven but we used the Big Green Egg whilst it was warming for a different cook.  The marrowbone was popped into a small pan and allowed to cook in the warming EGG at around 120-160C.  It was left until the marrow was soft and beginning to run out of the long bone.  This took around 20-30 minutes.  You can always ask your butcher to split the bones lengthways, but unless they are very long I rather like the idea of scooping the marrow out of the bone.   So once ready, the pan was removed with the bone and allowed to cool a little so the bone could be easily handled.  The marrow was scooped out and added to the juices in the pan.  Double the volume of softened salted butter was then added and the 2 elements were mixed and allowed to cool further.

As it becomes more solid the butter was roughly shaped into a cylinder and wrapped in clingfilm.  In the same way as you make ballotines the cling film cylinder was tied at one end, and then after tensioning, the other end. This was then chilled in the fridge. It can be kept in the fridge for as long as you would keep butter.  As you need some, simply slice a disk from the cylinder, remove the cling film and use as needed.  It can be used to baste a steak when it is resting wrapped in foil after cooking (as in the picture above), or instead of simple butter in mashed potatoes.  Do try this simple option before making one that has added herbs or shallots

……….  but do give it a go, it is a bit of a game changer!!

 

 

Bone Marrow Butter

August 2, 2019
: 6
: 10 min
: 30 min
: 40 min
: Easy

Salted butter enriched with roasted bone marrow

By:

Ingredients
  • 1 or more marrowbones
  • Double the volume of good salted butter
Directions
  • Step 1 Roast the marrowbone in a pan or roasting dish at between 120-180C for around 20 mins
  • Step 2 Allow to cool and then scrape the roasted marrow from the bone and gently breakup. Mix with double the volume of good quality salted butter.
  • Step 3 Allow to cool then roughly shape into a cylinder. Wrap the cylinder in clingfilm and shape and tie like a ballotine. Cool in the fridge.
  • Step 4 When needed cut a disk of the butter and add to your steak or mashed potatoes or wherever you need its extra richness. Leave the remainder in the fridge for later use.


3 thoughts on “Bone marrow butter”

  • there is an easier way to extract marrow from bones –
    soak the bones in hot-ish water (not boiling, i use 50/50 boiling to cold tap) for about 5–10 minutes;
    the marrow can then be pushed through and out whole from one end.

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