Bone Marrow Kloesse, a Little German Moment

Stocks are a staple in our house, mostly beef and fish stock, it goes into sauces, soups, risotto and many other dishes.

On a recent shopping trip, on the hunt for ingredients for the next batch of beef stock we did not find beef soup bones, much better, we found marrow bones.

Straight to Recipe

Shopping List l Tool List l Tips & Tricks l Recipe

This was one of these moments evoking instant childhood food memories, bone marrow kloesse in beef soup, these delicate, rich, fluffy balls floating in soup. Of course you can find them in any old-fashioned countryside restaurant all over Germany, of course my grandmother made them, so did my mother; and here comes the colossal generational break-down, I never made them.

We got the bones; all we needed was a recipe to guide us to culinary success and delight. Fortunately, there was an old edition of Marie Buchmeier’s “The Great Practical Cookbook” on our book shelf, in German, with the old Gothic typeface, first published in 1915, a good start.

Marie is usually quite vague in her recipes, in this one she actually did give us some measurable quantities; and eight lines of instructions, which did turn out to be sufficient.

We did some experiments with the first batch to get a to repeatable recipe, which could be executed by those who did not got it handed down by a German grandmother, that includes me.

Bone marrow kloesse are really quite delicate and can disintegrate even in simmering soup, if they don’t dissolve, they grow in size, which gives them incredible lightness, despite being created from a dense and heavy ingredient.

Here is what we found, most consistent with the childhood memories and our travels to the German countryside:

For the batch in the photos you need the following:

Tool List

Pan

Stainless steel bowl

Grapefruit spoon is great for getting the marrow out, but a soup spoon will do.

Whisk, electric or manual

Baking sheet with wire rack

Food mill for making bread crumbs

Shopping List

Ingredients

Marrow bones, about 7lbs, split in half, which butchers in the store can do for you.

Old dried-up bread, dried baguette works well, store bought breadcrumbs would work.

4 Eggs.

Parsley, ¼ cup will do. Some more to garnish the soup.

White pepper, season to liking.

Salt, to liking, this is a dish from the landlocked people, so a good rock salt would be authentic.

Beef soup, which you can make from the bones after you scraped out the marrow. Store bought ones will work as well.

Tips & Tricks

Steps

Scrape the bone marrow out of the bones into your pan.

Heat bone marrow in a pan on very low heat, it will essentially melt and become liquid.

Fish out any splinters of bones and let it cool.

In a stainless bowl, whisk the marrow until it becomes a little foamy.

Whisk in the eggs one by one.

Start adding breadcrumbs until you get a mixture you can form into little round shaped kloesse; mix in spices and parsley at the same time.

Here is the part you won’t find in most recipes, but we found that this will make your kloesse more robust, so they will not disintegrate as easily when heated in the soup.

After forming the kloesse, let them dry a little bit on a wire rack over a baking sheet, 30 minutes should be fine. After that, bake them in the oven for a really short period, at lowest heat or even just the heated up oven until they develop a very light dry skin, this helps them to not fall apart when they get heated up in the soup.

After you processed the rest of the bones into a nice beef soup, you can simmer the kloesse in the soup, they are delicate, so low heat is in order here. No soup, no problem, you can simmer them just in water, but it’s not quite the same. ~Robert