One pot, one afternoon, no separate stock step

Most bone recipes ask you to make broth first and dinner second. This one skips the queue. The bones go straight into the pot with water and a bay leaf, build their own broth over a lazy hour and a half, and then the root vegetables move in and turn the whole thing into dinner. It's the way soup was made before stock came in cartons — the pot just sits there getting better all afternoon while the kitchen windows fog up. Chunky, savoury and honest, with buttered bread doing the mopping.

2 hrs 35 mins 4 servings Prep 20 minsCook 2 hrs 15 minsSoupAustralian

Ingredients

  • 1kg Your Farmer lamb bones
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large brown onion, diced
  • 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 3 carrots, cut into chunks
  • 1 swede, peeled and cut into chunks
  • 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 2.5 litres cold water
  • Salt and pepper to season

Instructions

Heat the oil in your biggest heavy pot over medium-high heat and brown the bones on all sides for 5 to 6 minutes — colour here is flavour later.

1kg lamb bones1 tbsp olive oil

Drop the heat to medium, add the onion and cook for 5 minutes until softened, adding the garlic for the last minute.

1 onion2 cloves garlic

Pour in the water, add the bay leaves and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim off any foam in the first 10 minutes, then partly cover and let it blip away for 1.5 hours.

2.5L cold water2 bay leaves

Lift out the bones with tongs. Pick off any meat and set it aside; discard the bare bones.

Add the carrot, swede and potato and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes until everything is tender to the point of a knife.

3 carrots1 swede2 potatoes

Stir the picked meat back in, season generously with salt and pepper, and serve in deep bowls with thickly buttered bread.

Appears in

Lamb share add-on — Bones

Your Farmer CSA grass-fed lamb share — Pack B selection of pasture-raised lamb cuts, vacuum-sealed, NSW & ACT delivery
CSA Pastured Lamb Share
From $183.33

The Soup Bone Tradition

Ask anyone who grew up before the supermarket era and they'll tell you about the soup bone — the cheapest thing at the butcher and the backbone of half the week's dinners. That's the job the Your Farmer® lamb bones add-on does here. As the bones simmer, their connective tissue melts into gelatine, giving the broth a body that cubes and cartons simply can't fake, and the browning you do at the start builds a savoury depth that tastes like it took far more effort than it did. Keep the simmer lazy — a few gentle bubbles, never a rolling boil — and the broth stays clear and sweet rather than cloudy.

Swaps and Variations

The root vegetables are a suggestion, not a law: parsnip, turnip and chunks of pumpkin all pull their weight, and a handful of shredded silverbeet in the last 5 minutes adds some green. Half a cup of pearl barley or red lentils, added with the vegetables, thickens it towards a full meal-in-a-bowl. Our beef bones make an equally good pot on the same timings, and if you want more meat in the bowl, drop in a couple of forequarter chops with the bones and shred the lot at the picking stage.

Storage and Leftovers

This soup is one of those pots that's better on day two, once the flavours have had a night to settle. It keeps in the fridge for 4 days and freezes for up to 3 months in portion-sized containers — though the potato softens a little on thawing, so expect a slightly more rustic texture. Reheat gently on the stove with a splash of water. Leftover idea: crush the vegetables into the broth with the back of a spoon, reheat it thick, and call it a chunky lamb-and-veg mash-up that toddlers, in our experience, demolish.

The bones are an add-on to every box of our grass-fed lamb share — tick the box once and this soup becomes a standing winter fixture.

Frequently asked questions

There isn't much meat on the bones. Is the soup still worth making?

Yes — the bones' job is the broth, not the meat. Whatever you pick off is a bonus. If you want a meatier pot, add a couple of lamb forequarter chops with the bones and shred them in at the same stage.

Can I skip browning the bones?

You can, and the soup will still work — it'll just be paler and a touch less savoury. Six minutes of browning is the single cheapest flavour upgrade in the recipe.

Can I make this in a slow cooker?

Yes. Brown the bones and onion in a pan first, then cook everything except the root vegetables on LOW for 6 hours. Add the vegetables for the last 2 hours, then pick the bones and season as written.

Why do I skim the foam early on?

That grey foam is just protein released from the bones as they first heat. It's harmless, but if it simmers back in it clouds the broth — a few passes with a spoon keeps things clear.

Can I use beef bones instead?

Absolutely. Beef bones make a deeper, darker pot on the same method. Give them the same browning and, if you have the time, an extra half hour of simmering before the vegetables go in.

0 commentson Hearty Lamb Bone and Root Vegetable Soup

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