Bone marrow (food)

The bone marrow of animals is widely used by humans as food. It consists of yellow marrow contained in long bones. There is also red marrow, this contains more nutrients than yellow marrow. It may be found in bone-in cuts of meat purchased from a butcher or supermarket.

Many cultures have used bone marrow as food throughout history. Some anthropologists believe that early humans were scavengers rather than hunters in some regions of the world. Marrow would have been a useful food source (largely due to its fat content) for tool-using hominids, who were able to crack open the bones of carcasses left by apex predators such as lions.

European diners in the 18th century often used a marrow scoop (or marrow spoon), often of silver and with a long, thin bowl, as a table implement for removing marrow from a bone. Bone marrow was also used in various preparations, such as pemmican. Bone marrow's popularity as a food is now relatively limited in the western world, but it remains in use in some gourmet restaurants, and is popular among food enthusiasts.

In Vietnam, beef bone marrow is used as the soup base for the national staple dish, phở, while in the Philippines, the soup bulalo is made primarily of beef stock and marrow bones, seasoned with vegetables and boiled meat; a similar soup in the Philippines is called kansi. In Indonesia, bone marrow is called sumsum and can be found especially in Minangkabau cuisine. Sumsum is often cooked as soup or as gulai (a curry-like dish). In India and Pakistan, slow-cooked marrow is the core ingredient of the dish nalli nihari. In China and Mongolia, pig tibia is used to make slow-cooked soup, with one or both ends of the tibia chopped off. After the soup is done, the marrow would be scooped out with chopsticks. In some restaurants, cooked pig tibia would be served with a drinking straw specifically for sucking out the semi-liquified marrow.

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