....to gather up the bones?

[marvik]

Spin-off from another thread.

I buy whole free range chickens which I either roast and carve - or joint for casseroles. When the meal is over I've always gathered up the bones from people's plates to add to the carcass which is then boiled up for stock. The stock is used for soup or risotto.

Was baffled to learn - on another thread - that many people feel this is 'rank', 'disgusting' etc.

I think it's about good cooking and good household economy.

(In the old days the cat used to get the left over boiled chicken from the stock pot too..)

Your thoughts please?

I do this. Roast a chicken, everyone eats off the bones using their hands. All the bones go into the stock pot. They've still got all their bone marrow and cartilage that makes the stock good. Boil once for risotto then boil them again for soup.

Genuinely baffled about the whole germs thing - it's getting rolling boiled for a couple of hours, what's going to survive that?

Hi, I'm a great believer in making stock, but please don't reuse gnawed bones.

Found this online, you can look up heat resistant bacteria (i do boil mine longer Btw, but that doesn't cut it):

'It's not sanitary, in the sense of following the health rules. Especially since it's unlikely that you're following the two-hour guidelines: the gnawed bones have been in the danger zone enough to potentially pick up an enterobacter that produced heat-stable toxins. Boiling will not fix that. And having been in somebody's mouth increases the chance that such bacteria is one that infects humans.'

Ugh I make stock very occasionally and find that the carcass is more than enough to give it flavour without raking through peoples dinner plates. And as for saving wine left in glasses - seriously is that a thing ?

You must all serve roasts differently from me; no bones end up on the plates in the first place in my house!

It’s the fact you were bragging about all the random shit you do to a person you just met when they just wanted to small talk about the weekend that was weird.

The full exchange re health appears to be here.

cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/86553/using-half-eaten-bones-to-make-stock-sanitary

It's a thread for professional chefs - so there'd be particular considerations if doing mass commercial cooking for strangers.

The consensus seems to be that while using gnawed bones is not risk free - food production and preparation can't ever be 100% sterile. You can take additional precautions by roasting gnawed bones.

The main question would appear to be whether or not you're cooking for someone with a severely compromised immune system.

I just serve the meat without the bones in it and use the carcass for stock. If you want to use the bones then why even put them on someone's plate?

The ingredients listed are:-Wheat Flour (with added Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Salt, Dried Glucose Syrup, Flavour Enhancer (Monosodium Glutamate), Yeast Extract, Flavourings, Chicken Fat (3%), Potato Starch, Sugar, Concentrated Chicken Extract (2%), Colour (Ammonia Caramel).

You have different stock cubes to me. The ingredients on mine starts with "63% concentrated chicken stock" and the other ingredients are things that improve the flavour, like sugar and salt.

If serving chicken to small children I'd either give them breast meat - or perhaps help them get meat off the bones.

I think aesthetically a portion of chicken on the bone looks more appealing, than a load of shredded scraps. Plus if someone wants to pick up their drumstick and get all the meat off it, then they have the opportunity.

I'm a lapsed vegetarian, so tend to think that if you eat meat you should really be eating everything. It seems wrong for something to be killed only so that lots of it can then be chucked away uneaten.

You could decide that eating a dead animal is disgusting - that has a logic to it.

But deciding that it's fine to eat just bits of it, and other bits have to automatically to be chucked away seems more like a kind of superstition than something that's fundamentally about hygiene.

Stock made from bones is very nutritional so it is a good idea to make it rather than use cubes (I actually do both, so the bone stock with a cube or two..)
But no I've never used bones from other people's plates, it's never occurred to me.

It's disgusting. Boiling up the carcass is enough to make a nice stock,you don't need to go scavenging off other people's plate.

I'm a lapsed vegetarian, so tend to think that if you eat meat you should really be eating everything. It seems wrong for something to be killed only so that lots of it can then be chucked away uneaten.

It's not 'lots of it' though is it?

It's just the bones that make it to the plates.

By that reckoning, do you also scrape half eaten sausages/burgers/shepherd's pie/lasagne off of people's plates and reheat/rehash that too?

I don't do this, but I have read well known chefs saying they do this.
I suspect most people commenting don't make stock or soup from bones, so no they would never do this.

The other thread was tongue in cheek, I think I'm most aghast at freezing wine leftovers from people's glasses. Why are there leftovers?!

I do make stock from the carcass and I don't take the meat off of chicken legs for example but once it's been on a plate it is not going into the stock pot . If I roast a chicken and there is leftover chicken I keep it for salads/sandwiches/pasta etc, but I don't take the scraps off someone's plate and keep them, so I don't see why bones would be different

If I'd carved someone a couple of slices of meat and put them on that person's plate, but they'd only eaten one of them and left the other, I would certainly reuse that rather than binning it.

That's not 'scavenging'' or taking 'dregs' to my mind. It's a sensible use of good food. Spouse who cooks half the time works on the same principles I do.

I accept that others feel differently.

We've brought up three children, entertain family members and friends - and everyone in my home is alive and generally well, so I we're unlikely to be a major public health liability...

🤮 vile vile vile

But what do you do with half eaten sausages/burgers/shepherd's pie/lasagne etc?

Carcass yes - people's chewed leftovers is utterly revolting 😖

Any suitable leftovers in this house go to my 3 dogs 🙂

Any suitable leftovers in this house go to my 3 dogs

Ditto,though I only have two dogs now and I don't give them chicken bones obviously.

Are we talking about after the family roast? Are we all so squeamish about germs from our own family?
The children who kiss you and have a lick of your icecream, a taste of your food or mouthful of your juice?
The partner who presumably you kiss with open mouth and often put their genitals in your mouth...

Yet some boiled up bones they might have touched is disgusting?

I dont make stock but if I did I would have no problem using all available left overs.

Oh WhereFor, thank you for being sane....

Marvik I’m with you on this one. It’s not like we are collecting bones off the plates of strangers in restaurants. I love a good stock. I do a nigella and keep my chicken grave yard going in the freezer for a while then spend one of the days I work from home Slow cooking them for hours. Now as for the bones of my family...😉

I do it too. We don’t chew them and spit them out into the crock pot... we use a knife and fork so the bones aren’t in our mouths.

I’m more surprised by people saying home made stock doesn’t taste of anything! I put any leftover veg and gravy in too and do it in the slow cooker overnight. It’s great!