Jaune Chat's Life, the Universe, and Everything

Haha! So glad you could rescue it! That sounds awful yummy! I love lamb.

There may be lots of ways to cook with soup bones, but here's what little I've learned:
- Use as little water as you can get away with and let it reduce down to half at least twice. That is, if you start with two quarts, let it simmer until you have one quart of broth, then add another quart of water and simmer until you have one quart of broth.
- Works best if you add an onion, some celery, and carrots with the bones. Leave in the whole time. the onion/celery/carrot combo is a chef standard called mirepoix.
- A bone adds a lovely additional flavor to anything cooked for a very long time, like in a crockpot overnight. Anything cooked for only an hour or two isn't long enough to extract much flavor from a bone.
- If at all possible, break the bone before cooking. Put it on concrete and hit it with a hammer a few times. A bone that is already in cross section, like a chop bone or a T-bone, is fine as is. Small, porous bones like those on chickens and turkeys are fine as is, too. But a long, solid bone like for a bone-in ham or whole rib bones need to be broken to let the flavor out.