Pork bones (femur / blade)

Pork soup bones, marrow-filled femur (tung gwat) for a rich broth, or flat shoulder-blade and sai si bones for a cleaner, leaner one. Blanched from cold water to purge blood foam, they simmer for hours as the structural base of nearly every old-fire soup. Cheap, dependable and interchangeable with ribs when meat is wanted.

TCM properties

Nature · neutral　Flavour · sweet、salty　Meridians · kidney

Traditional food therapy

In Cantonese food therapy pork bones are used to nourish yin and replenish deficiency, valued above all as the foundation that carries an old-fire soup.

Cautions: read first

• Skim off the fat that floats on the soup
• Those with gout should go carefully with long-boiled, concentrated meat soups (a lot of purine leaches out)
• Those with high blood lipids should pick the leaner shoulder-blade bones

Preparation

Blanch them (飛水) by starting them in cold water and boiling briefly to drive off the blood foam and the smell, then rinse them before the real boil.

Origin

Farmed on piggeries nationwide; always in supermarket and Asian grocer freezers. Frozen soup and marrow bones at Australian Asian grocers

Availability in Australia

Easy to find

Pairs well with