Bone Marrow & Ice Cream?

When it comes to ice cream, lots of people are traditionalists. Vanilla and chocolate always rank high when surveys are taken on America’s favorite ice cream flavors. Others like to try something newer and equally delicious like Cookie Kaboom or Beez Neez.

One of the many great things about ice cream is that because there are so many different flavors to try, you’ll never run out of reasons to keep eating ice cream.

It’s true that flavors have gotten more creative over the years. We’ve found places that add bacon to ice cream and you can find people that fully support the marriage of olive oil and ice cream.

But bone marrow ice cream?

That’s what is being served up by one ice cream maker in Portland, Oregon. The folks who run Salt & Straw, a small ice cream maker, are testing Bone Marrow and Bourbon Smoked Cherry ice cream. The ice cream is actually made with bone marrow, which features a lot of fat. This ice cream is made with 17% butterfat, which gives it a very thick, creamy base.

The shop is using a smoky bone marrow to go along with the bourbon-soaked cherries. The people at Salt & Straw say bone marrow is the base ingredient to many salty foods like soups and barbecue sauce, so why not ice cream? The makers say that smoky bone marrow combined with the bourbon-smoked Bing cherries is a “match made in heaven”.

This is homemade ice cream and that fact is reflected in the ingredients. The Salt & Straw recipe calls for two cups heavy cream, one cup whole milk and one pound of marrow bones. The marrow bones are dropped into boiling water, then removed and allowed to cool. The marrow is removed from the bones and rendered over low heat. The liquid marrow is eventually poured into the ice cream mixture.

The flavor remains in its testing stages. It could be available in store by summer.