around here a soup bone is a cross cut 2 inch section of a shin bone. I grew up on the east coast and a soup bone was always a piece of shin bone.
What were you expecting?
In a pinch i have made beef soup from short ribs.

I agree with linda92, to me a soup bone is a shin bone aka marrow bone.

As for orange zest, yes I save every bit and dehydrate. I make a zesty orange salt with sea salt, orange zest, dried hot perppers and a touch of raw sugar. I used it on pork and chicken. It is delicious!

I was expecting the bone but not the meat. So rather than getting a couple of pounds of bones I got mostly meat with two shin bones. Again not a bad thing but not what I expected.

We use quite a bit of orange zest in our cookies and have recently started saving the zest in the freezer. We'll zest a dozen oranges at a time and make juice after all the zest has been removed. So far, the zest has held up after a month in the freezer.

A. I buy neck bones for stock $2.70 / lb., or rib bones at $2.99 /lb. Short ribs mostly at $7.99 /lb. too expensive for me.

B. Orange zest:

1. Peel,

2. cut,

3. Vacuum pack,

4. Freeze.

dcarch

To me, soup bones are meaty and don't necessarily have a lot of marrow. They're usually 8-10" long, and it's been awhile since the butcher had them. They used to be free, then a couple of bucks, then still a couple of bucks but labelled as "dog bones", though would probably give the dog an upset tummy. Now, they have marrow bones for as much or more as good cuts of meat, and too much marrow in them, without any meat on them, and not good for soup. Sometimes there are knuckles that have some meat on that I'll use for soup, but they're not as good as soup bones. When things are better for doing my own shopping, I'm planning to drive a little farther to the nose to tail butcher and seeing if I can get decent soup bones from him.

Agreed about freezing zest. The big carrier of the perfume of the zest is the oil, and that won't keep well without freezing. We have year round citrus, so I don't usually bother, but I have done it, and it does work. It should keep up to half a year in the freezer. You might try freezing the zest in juice in a tiny portion ice mold, then sealing, or at least bagging, the cubes. I think that might keep its flavor longer, but it's been too long for me to remember for sure.

Any citrus zest freezes well. I used to freeze lemon zest and juice years ago before we had a tree.

I like plllog's suggestion of freezing the zest it in a little juice.

agmss, I just started a thread on this same question a few weeks ago. The soup bones I get from my processor when I butcher a steer look like the picture of what you got. The soup bones at the store look like your first picture. I was wondering if you could even make soup out of those!

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/6081028/beef-bones-bone-broth-and#n=7

You can see that mine look a lot like yours, LOL.

Annie

Ok so I have it backwards. I have made soup/broth with the plain bones but I add some additional meat and veggies. I don’t buy them as much because as you said they cost more than meat. My original plan when my sister said she was bringing me bones was to roast them and then make a broth in my Instant Pot.

I don't think there's any standard for what "soup" bones are. It's no wonder you and your sister weren't talking about the same thing. The made up osso buco sounds great!

A search of images included everything from osso buco to split marrow bones to oxtail to slices of legs with the full complement of meat attached to the section of bone. When I say "soup bone" I mean something like these lamb bones, but of beef as well.

http://www.unixcommerce.com/projects/okeechobeefarms/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/prod_lamb_soup_bones_1.jpg 

I use whatever meaty bones I can find at the butcher’s to make broth; the last I made with huge, meaty rib bones. I guess “soup bones” even there are the cross-cut bones with marrow, but those alone don’t make very good soup.... IMHO.

I zest any citrus before slicing; then I let it dry on the counter just a bit so it isn’t wet; then I freeze it in my little containers. It is a true treasure.

Rarely do I find "soup bones" at the market. But I did find some last week and they looked like the big picture. They did make good soup. A meatier soup than I'm used to.

I think the soup bones I get from our processor are cut from the shank above the knee, not from below the knee. They look like the big picture Agmss15 posted. They have a lot of meat and not much bone at all. We use them mostly for stew and vegetable beef soup. More like beef soup with vegetables.