I don’t know about you, but my freezer looks like it belongs to a serial killer. Barely concealed beneath packages of frozen peas, paratha, and pajeon rest bags upon bags of bones, skin, and viscera. A chicken spine here, some turkey wings there, a little baggie of duck hearts and gizzards, rolls of pork skin that will—one of these days, I swear—become crispy chicharron. There’s a nearly-forgotten pint container of lamb casings, from that time I tried to make merguez. (How long ago was that? Eh, they’re probably still good.)
I keep this macabre collection of animal parts because it pains me to throw away even the smallest smidgen of flesh and bone, and I always try to turn every last bit of a once-living thing into something edible. Imagine some ancient ogre was planning to make a meal of you, took one look at your feet, and was like, “Uh, I don’t know what to do with those,” and unceremoniously tossed them in the trash. That’d be pretty rude to your little piggies, wouldn’t it?
And since I have this stash, I always endeavor to make the most of my bones. The best of these moves, especially during Thanksgiving and the holiday season, is making turkey bone butter—that is, butter in which turkey bones have been slowly cooked until deep, caramel brown, imparting all of their meaty flavors into the butterfat.
During my typical Thanksgiving dinner prep, the oven is invariably occupied with the bird or various casseroles, but I can usually maneuver things on the stovetop to keep one burner free. So one year, instead of roasting turkey bones in the oven for stock as I had in the past, I tried simply sautéing them in a little butter. The resulting roasty turkey-flavored fat and fond (that is, the dark toasty bits that get stuck to the bottom of the pan) would become the base for my gravy, and afterward, the bones would go into the stock as usual.
Then it hit me: If I can make a little bit of bone-flavored butter for my gravy, why not make a lot? Why not have a whole pint of the stuff to slather all over my Thanksgiving spread?
For a brown poultry stock, I usually roast the bones in a 425° oven until they’re deep mahogany, then simmer them in a stockpot with aromatics—usually the trimmings from my stuffing prep—for as long as possible. With bone butter, I realized I could just cook the bones on the stovetop in butter until they hit that deep golden brown color. They’ll have imparted plenty of fat-soluble roasted poultry flavor compounds to the butter, but they still retain plenty of water-soluble flavors (not to mention collagen for body) for the stock, as well.
My basic bone butter recipe, if you could call it that, is as follows:
- Get some bones and some butter. I typically try to use equal parts by weight of each, but it all depends on what’s on hand. Bone butter is not an exact science. Just make the most of what you have.
- Chop up the bones if necessary. A turkey spine is too big to fit into my sauté pans, so separating it into segments around two inches long—using a heavy-duty cleaver if you’ve got one—makes the whole procedure easier. (Plus, smaller bone bits will give you a better extraction once you put them into your stockpot.) Give the chopped bones a quick rinse and pat dry to remove any errant bone fragments. But you can totally skip this step and use whole leg, wing, or neck bones if you're short on time.
- Cook the bones in the butter. You’re not making a confit exactly, but I like to let the bones simmer low and slow in the butter for at least 30 minutes. You’re looking for a nice, tasty-looking golden brown. If any scum rises to the surface, skim it off.
- Remove the bones and strain the butter. Daub any excess butter off the bones if necessary and plop them into a stockpot with aromatics and whatever else you like in your stock. Pass the bone butter through a fine-mesh sieve or cheesecloth into a heatproof container. Keep it in the fridge if you plan to use it within a week; otherwise stash it in the freezer for long-term storage.
Now, the types of bones you use will vary depending on your menu and method of preparation. At the very least, your turkey will almost certainly come with its neck tucked inside its body cavity. And while neck bones alone work well enough, I like to boost the flavor with even more bones whenever possible. In my household, I almost always make a spatchcocked turkey, because it cooks in a fraction of the time of a traditionally roasted bird and results in more even cooking of the breast and leg meat. To spatchcock the turkey, I cut out the backbone and usually remove the wing tips as well, which make for excellent bone butter.
Once you’ve made a bunch of bone butter, perhaps you’re wondering what to do with it. The answers are myriad.
- Use it in place of fresh butter in the roux for your gravy.
- Spoon dollops of it onto your stuffing before it comes out of the oven, infusing it with even more buttery poultry flavor.
- Put a little in a crock to serve alongside biscuits or dinner rolls with your Thanksgiving spread.
- Toss popcorn with it. (Hell yes.)
- Get creative and bake with it. (If you make turkey butter croissants, I want to hear from you. Please.)
Even if you’re not the type to have your Thanksgiving menu planned out by the first week of November, it’s worth remembering that you don’t need to wait until Thanksgiving to make bone butter. If your freezer, like mine, resembles a medieval ossuary, break out those bits and bobs and make chicken bone butter, duck bone butter, ham bone butter. Treat those bones well, and they’ll treat you well in return.