Beef bone broth - cook the bones?

[stkl]

Do I precook the bones for (beef) bone broth? The chicken broth recipe uses roast chicken but I am unsure if the beef should be cooked or make the broth from uncooked bones?

[SugarcubeOD]

Some people roast the bones in the oven first... I don't... I just put them in the crockpot/pot either raw or even frozen.

[Dodo Bird]

I personally find I get a (in my opinion) better, more pronounced flavor if I roast the bones first.  For red meat stock, I generally just use leftover bones that have come out of roasts or smoking/grilling, so it's not that often I'll be procuring bones just for making stock (but when I do get bones just for stock, I'll roast them).

 

But yeah, you can absolutely do it either way (I think traditional French cooking even has differentiating terms for stocks made from cooked bones and stocks made from raw bones - gotta look this up) - the resulting flavor will just be a bit different, so just make stock the way that you like the best.

[praxisproject]

I use both, I like the roasted flavor better, but sometimes I can't be bothered, so sometimes they're all raw, sometimes they're all cooked and sometimes they're a bit of both.

 

If you keep any cooked leftover bones (from steaks, chicken wings, etc), pop them in a bag in the freezer and you can add a few to raw bones for extra flavor.

 

For the cooking geeks, fond blanc is one of the raw stocks, it's raw for the colour, cooked bones add colour and it was intended to be white.

Personally I don't care what colour my food is, as long as it tastes good