Pork Bones for Broth & Stock

Buy pork bones online for the bones that make the great long-simmered broths — a milky Japanese tonkotsu, a clear Filipino nilaga, a Caribbean souse or a simple pork stock.

Which pork bones for which broth

Neck bones carry the most meat and marrow and give body and colour — the everyday choice for stock and nilaga. Split trotters (pig's feet) are almost pure skin, cartilage and bone: they are what turns a tonkotsu milky and white and what sets a broth to jelly once chilled. Hock bones sit between the two. For a classic tonkotsu, use roughly two parts trotter to one part neck bone.

Getting a milky, gelatinous result

Blanch the bones first: cover with cold water, bring to the boil for 5 minutes, then drain and rinse off the grey scum. Return to a clean pot, cover generously and boil hard — a rolling boil, not a simmer — for 8 to 12 hours, topping up with boiling water. That constant agitation is what emulsifies the fat and collagen into a white broth. For a clear stock, do the opposite: a bare simmer, skimmed often. Cool and refrigerate broth within two hours and use within three to four days, or freeze — the Food Standards Australia and New Zealand cooling guidance applies to stocks too.

All our pork bones are human-grade, from the same Australian pigs as our retail pork.

How much you need, and what to do with the broth

For a batch of tonkotsu, start with about 2kg of bones to 3–4 litres of water — it reduces hard over the long boil. Once strained, a good pork broth keeps 3–4 days in the fridge and freezes for 3 months; freeze it in portions sized to one bowl of ramen or one pot of soup. The rendered fat that sets on top is worth keeping — stir a spoonful back into the finished bowl, or use it to fry aromatics for the tare.

A note on the bones themselves

Our pork neck bones and trotters are cut from the same Australian pigs as our retail pork and kept in the human cold chain. Blanching before the main boil is not optional for a clean broth — it removes the scum and off-flavours that would otherwise cloud and sour a long simmer.