Ranée at Arabian Knits wrote:
> I usually make stock with roasted bones leftover from dinner, a
> little meat on them, but not a whole hunk of meat. However, I am trying
> to make some stock from lamb shanks and I would like to save at least a
> little bit of the meat to eat. Should I just remove the meat from the
> bone once it is soft and return the bones and scraps to the pot? Or am
> I stuck getting another package of meat out and feeding these scraps to
> the chickens and turkeys?


My mother always made beef soup by starting with a meaty bone. The small
meat bits were then removed and shredded after it cooked and returned to
the pot.
I've never had such good soup as hers was.

On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:41:06 -0500, Goomba >
wrote:

>Ranée at Arabian Knits wrote:
>> I usually make stock with roasted bones leftover from dinner, a
>> little meat on them, but not a whole hunk of meat. However, I am trying
>> to make some stock from lamb shanks and I would like to save at least a
>> little bit of the meat to eat. Should I just remove the meat from the
>> bone once it is soft and return the bones and scraps to the pot? Or am
>> I stuck getting another package of meat out and feeding these scraps to
>> the chickens and turkeys?
>
>
>My mother always made beef soup by starting with a meaty bone. The small
>meat bits were then removed and shredded after it cooked and returned to
>the pot.
>I've never had such good soup as hers was.

That's because in your mom's time butchers offered meaty soup bones.

The more meat the better the stock. You can't make decent stock with
heavily trimmed bones... bones per se contribute no flavor
whatsoever... the connective tissue (the sheath covering and the
sinew/tendons at the ends adds gelatine but adds zero flavor (plain
gelatine is totally flavorless). People began using bones to make
stock because not all that long ago soup bones were still free, and
they did contain quite a bit of meat. Nowadays it's best to buy an
inexpensive tough cut of beef to make beef stock. The boiled meat can
be added back to the stock, eaten heavily seasoned on bread, or used
for force meat (a delicacy). Poultry bones should never be broken for
stock, fowl bones are hollow but contain some very foul/bitter debris
(birds are not mammals, they have a very different anatomy). From
what I've read how most folks here make stock they would be far better
off using bouillion cubes... very simple rule of cooking; garbage in,
garbage out.