Roasting the Bones

In my house there are food allergies to deal with. One of those food allergies is beef. No other dark meat, just beef. When I can find it, and afford it, lamb, goat, and ostrich fill the gap some. When hunters can spare venison from their hunts it is wonderful as I can sub it one to one for beef.  But until now the only way to add a deep flavor to many things was to use molasses, sorghum, or coffee. (In our case, decaf coffee.)

Another allergy is mushrooms which is yet another flavor that adds depth to dishes. In the last year I discovered that I can substitute chestnuts for mushrooms and get that flavor profile. And even better, chestnuts can be cooked the same way.

But one of the flavors that I just couldn't get was that deep "brown" flavor. The one you get in brown gravy. If it were music, it'd be that deep bass note in the composition. Until today. It came to my attention that there was an idea to roast the bones of different animals before you used them for stock. The idea has been pecking at the back of my mind for a few months but I just didn't have the energy and time. Or so I thought.  I decided to research it further yesterday and discovered that it doesn't really require any extra energy. And it doesn't really require any extra time on my part.

So my adventure started with stripping the meat from the turkey carcass, something I would have done anyways. But as I stripped it, I just tossed the bones back into the roaster. Then I set the oven to 450 and put the roaster back in the oven for 20 minutes. That's it. I didn't go fancy. The fat from the original roasting was in the pan to provide oil as needed. And since I typically do plain stock, I didn't add anything else.

Twenty minutes later I pulled out brown bones. I still had my doubts but I moved them to the crockpot, added the pan drippings, added water, and set the crockpot on low. This morning I awoke to a wonderful scent coming from the crockpot. A deep brown stock with a deep flavor. Because, yeah, testing was mandatory. And I bet that if I do this with venison bones, when I can get them, that will go from being a bland stock to an absolutely amazing one.

So roasting the bones is now going to be part of making my stocks. It adds wonderful flavor depth and I don't really see a reason not to have that depth of flavor. Although, I'll probably make sure to have some regular chicken stock on hand as well.