From Nose to Tail: How to Use Bones, Fat, and Offcuts at Home

For most of the twentieth century, the parts of the animal that were not a steak, a roast, or a chop ended up being quietly discarded or sold for pennies. The modern supermarket model accelerated this. When buying meat became a transaction involving pre-portioned, plastic-wrapped cuts under fluorescent lighting, the relationship between the whole animal and the individual meal was almost completely severed.

The result was a kind of culinary amnesia. Generations of home cooks grew up not knowing what to do with marrow bones, how to render beef fat, or why stock bones make a difference that no commercial stock cube can replicate.

That amnesia is being reversed. The nose-to-tail philosophy, the idea that respecting an animal's life means using every part of it thoughtfully and well, has moved from restaurant menus into home kitchens. It turns out the parts of the animal that were discarded were often the most interesting ones.

This guide covers the essential bones, fat, and offcuts available through Matangi's Bones and Fat collection, how to use them, and why they deserve a regular place in your cooking.

Why Nose-to-Tail Cooking Matters

There is an ethical dimension to this, and it is worth naming directly. A 100% grass-fed Angus animal raised on Matangi's Hawke's Bay farms for a minimum of 24 months represents a significant investment of land, care, and time. Using every part of that animal with intention and skill is a form of respect for the farming process, the animal itself, and the people who raised it.

There is also a practical and flavour-based argument that is equally compelling. The bones, fat, and offcuts of a well-raised grass-fed animal carry flavour that the prime cuts do not. Bone marrow is rich in a way that no steak can replicate. A properly made bone broth from quality stock bones has a depth and body that a shop-bought carton cannot come close to. Rendered grass-fed beef fat is a cooking medium with a distinctive, clean, beefy flavour that makes everything cooked in it better.

These are not inferior products. They are different products, and in many ways more demanding of skill and patience than simply cooking a steak.

Stock Bones: The Foundation of Real Cooking

If you own a stockpot and nothing else, stock bones are the place to start.

Matangi's Stock Bones are a favourite with professional chefs precisely because a properly made stock from quality grass-fed bones produces a depth of flavour, body, and richness that forms the foundation of great cooking. Stock bones are packed with collagen, which converts to gelatin during the long cook. That gelatin is what gives a proper stock it’s body, that almost lip-sticking quality when chilled, and what makes sauces glossy and braising liquids rich.

How to make a proper beef bone broth:

• Roast the bones at 220°C for 30 to 40 minutes, turning once, until deeply browned. This step is not optional. The roasting drives caramelisation that adds colour and an enormous amount of flavour to the final stock.

• Transfer the roasted bones to your largest pot and cover with cold water.

• Add a roughly chopped onion, a couple of carrots, a few celery stalks, a head of garlic halved horizontally, a handful of peppercorns, and a bay leaf or two.

• Bring slowly to a simmer. Skim the grey foam that rises to the surface in the first 15 to 20 minutes. Do not let the stock boil aggressively; a gentle, barely-moving simmer is correct.

• Simmer for a minimum of 6 hours. For the deepest flavour and the richest gelatin extraction, 12 to 24 hours produces a noticeably superior result.

• Strain through a fine sieve, discard the solids, and allow to cool. Once chilled, the fat will rise and solidify on the surface and can be skimmed off and reserved for cooking (see below).

• The finished stock should be a deep amber colour. If it sets like a loose jelly when chilled, you have done it correctly.

What to do with it: Use it as the base for soups and stews, to deglaze pans after searing meat, to braise anything in the Low and Slow collection, or to add body to sauces and gravies. It keeps refrigerated for five days and freezes beautifully in portions. Pouring stock into ice-cube trays gives you ready-to-use flavour boosts for any pan sauce.

Marrow Bones: A Simple Luxury

There is a reason that roasted marrow bones appear on the menus of restaurants that care about ingredients. Bone marrow is one of the most indulgent, flavour-dense, and effortlessly impressive things you can put on a table.

Matangi's Marrow Bones are cut from the femur and tibia of the animal, which contain the highest concentration of rich, unctuous marrow. They require almost nothing from you in the kitchen.

How to roast marrow bones:

• Season the exposed marrow lightly with flaky sea salt.

• Place cut-side up in an oven dish or directly on an oven rack.

• Roast at 220°C for 15 to 20 minutes until the marrow is soft, pulling away slightly from the bone, and beginning to bubble at the edges.

• Serve immediately with thick slices of toasted sourdough, a small pile of flaky salt, parsley leaves, and a wedge of lemon.

The technique is simply to scoop the marrow out with a small knife or spoon and spread it on the toast, as you would bone marrow butter. The flavour is deeply beefy, rich, and slightly gelatinous in a way that is genuinely unlike anything else.

This is the kind of starter that takes 20 minutes from start to finish and feels like something from a serious restaurant. It is also, by some measures, one of the most nutritionally dense things you can eat, packed with fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids from grass-fed beef.

Beyond the table: If you are not eating the marrow immediately, it can be whipped with softened butter, herbs, and seasoning to make marrow butter, which keeps refrigerated for up to a week and is exceptional melted over a resting steak.

Beef Fat Trimmings: Render and Use

Most home cooks have a bottle of neutral cooking oil on the bench and little else. But rendered grass-fed beef fat, called beef tallow when fully rendered and clarified, is a cooking medium with a flavour and stability that vegetable oils simply cannot offer.

Matangi's Beef Fat Trimmings are a mix of subcutaneous fat and fat from around the muscles. This is different from suet, which comes specifically from around the kidneys and has different properties. The fat trimmings are ideal for rendering down into tallow for everyday cooking use.

How to render beef fat into tallow:

• Cut the fat into small, roughly even pieces. Smaller pieces render faster and more completely.

• Place in a heavy pot or slow cooker over very low heat. Add a small splash of water to prevent scorching while the fat begins to melt.

• Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for 1 to 2 hours. The fat will gradually liquefy and the remaining solid pieces (called cracklings or greaves) will shrink and turn golden.

• Strain the liquid through a fine sieve or cheesecloth into a heatproof jar or container.

• Allow to cool. It will solidify into a cream or pale yellow fat at room temperature.

Rendered tallow keeps refrigerated for several weeks and can be frozen indefinitely. Use it to:

• Roast potatoes and root vegetables. Beef tallow roasted potatoes are in a completely different category to those cooked in olive oil or vegetable oil.

• Fry eggs and cook vegetables in the pan after searing a steak, using the residual fat already in the pan.

• Sear any cut from the Steaks collection or Hidden Champions collection before finishing in butter for the last minute.

• Season and maintain carbon steel or cast iron cookware.

Lamb Marrow and Stock Bones

The nose-to-tail philosophy extends naturally to Matangi's chicory-finished lamb, and the bones are no exception. Lamb Marrow Bones and Lamb Stock Bones are now available alongside the beef equivalent, and they bring a distinctly different flavour profile that is worth exploring separately.

Lamb marrow is slightly more delicate and less intensely fatty than beef marrow, with a subtle sweetness that reflects the chicory finishing Matangi's lambs go through before processing. Roasted in the same way as the beef marrow bones above, they are excellent served with herbs, lemon, and toasted sourdough, but also work beautifully alongside a roast lamb main as a starter or side.

Lamb stock bones produce a lighter, more aromatic broth than beef stock bones. The resulting stock is the natural base for lamb-forward soups and stews, for braising a Lamb Shoulder low and slow, or for adding body to a pan sauce after cooking lamb chops. Use the same roasting and long-simmer method outlined in the Stock Bones section above, but reduce the cook time to 4 to 6 hours. The finished lamb stock is noticeably more aromatic, with herbal and slightly grassy notes from the pasture-raised animal.

A Note on Lamb Fat

For those who cook with Matangi's Chicory-Finished Lamb range, Lamb Fat Trimmings are available alongside the beef fat. Rendered lamb fat has a distinct flavour that is exceptional for roasting vegetables served alongside lamb, for basting a butterflied leg on the BBQ, or for making the kind of lamb fat roasted potatoes that tend to disappear from the tray before anything else is plated.

Getting Started

The easiest entry point for nose-to-tail cooking is a batch of stock bones. Set aside a Sunday afternoon, roast the bones, fill the pot, and let it run for most of the day. The smell that fills your kitchen during this process is, by itself, worth the effort. And the stock you end up with, ready to portion and freeze, will make every soup, stew, and sauce you cook for the next few months noticeably better.

From there, add marrow bones to your next order. Roast them as a starter before dinner one night. Then try rendering a small batch of fat and cooking your next roast potatoes in it.

None of this requires special equipment or advanced technique. It requires only a willingness to engage with the whole animal rather than just the parts that have already been turned into steaks.

Explore the full Bones and Fat collection at matangi.co.nz, alongside the complete range of grass-fed Angus beef and chicory-finished lamb. All orders are dispatched weekly from our Hastings butchery in chilled, vacuum-sealed packaging with nationwide delivery across New Zealand.

For more on the slower, lower side of beef cookery, see our guide to How to Choose the Right Beef Cut for Every Cooking Method and our Beginner's Guide to Low and Slow Beef.