Question
Justan Nelson
I live just outside of Portland, OR. I am finding it extremely challenging to find veal bones to make stock (and thus the sauce derivates I want to try.) Can you share any thoughts on substitutes?
Answer
Well, the substitutes for veal bones would simply be other bones which produce a different end product. So, depending on how finicky you are about what you want in the end, then maybe there are no substitutes. But you can try beef bones. You can try a blend of beef and chicken. You can try a blend of beef and pork, beef, pork, and chicken, to find these other results that can be satisfactory to what it is that you want to make. Okay? Yeah. I too have noticed over the last, I'm not sure how many years, but let's call it several years, veal bones have become difficult to find. And I get this question from students every once in a while from different parts of the country. And so it seems to be just a nationwide sort of phenomenon these days. There are sources online for veal bones, and some of these are butcher markets or meat markets in other cities. Chicago comes to mind, and I think I found something on the East Coast outside of New York or something like that in the past. You can probably imagine it gets spendy to ship a few pounds of bones across the country. So, it comes down to answering the question of whether it's worthwhile or not from your perspective. But that's my quick response. And the other option out there is to reach out to somebody that produces cattle for meat and have a conversation with on the topic of veal, and if you might have some special access through a relationship like that. It would probably require you to buy the whole animal and then to deal with sort of the fabrication and the bones on your own, I would imagine. I have done that with lamb and goat in the past. You just buy the whole thing, and then you've got full control over how you want to use the different cuts of those animals. So, some different options. They're not easy, any of them, but they can be fun in terms of the troubleshooting that goes into unraveling this mystery here. So, hope you enjoy the experience, Justin, and good to hear from you.
