Foods “Bone broth?! What is the world is THAT?” I asked incredulously. I was baffled. How was this any different than regular broth or stock that I purchased from the store? And why was it so important to drink bone broth regularly?
If you’re new on your real-food journey, you might be wondering the same thing I was just a couple of years ago. This former Sprite-drinking, Trix-loving, microwave popcorn-snacking, raw cookie dough-loving girl has come a long way in just a few short years!
If I can learn how to incorporate healing foods into my diet, you can too! Skip nutrient depleted store-bought broth that’s filled with MSG and other additives and make your own nourishing broth.
What is Bone Broth?
Do you remember your grandma always saving the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, placing it in hot water with some veggies, and making some sort of soup with in the days following Thanksgiving? Or maybe after your family ate a whole chicken, your mom saved the chicken carcass and make chicken noodle soup with it.
This is bone broth. It can be made with the bones from any animal. Our family tends to make broth from beef bones, primarily because that’s what we typically have in the freezer.
We don’t let any part of that cow go to waste! When we order our grass-fed cow from the farmer, we ask for it all—meat, bones, organ meat, and fat. The farmer I order from thinks I’m a little nuts, but after ordering from him for a few years now I think he has accepted my crazy ways because my cash is still green. 🙂
Why Drink Bone Broth?
As it turns out, chicken noodle soup might be just what the doctor ordered. Bone broth is a fabulous addition to a healthy diet. When you make bone broth from the bones of a healthy animal it can offer a surprising number of benefits.
Side Note: What is a healthy animal? It’s an animal that has been raised on healthy food, allowed to free-range, not injected with hormones, antibiotics and other nasties. We talked about healthy beef in this article, but most of the concepts apply to other animals as well.
For years, scientists have known bone broth provides the body with numerous health benefits (too numerous to list all of them here). Minerals such as calcium, magnesium, phosphors, silicone, and sulfur are plentiful in bone broth.
- The collagen in bone broth improves your skin, hair, and nails.
- Gelatin is good for gut health (something I’ve personally really been focusing on over the past year). Many individuals in the US suffer from hyperpermiability of the gut (also known as leaky gut). The gelatin helps to fix the leaks and aids in digestion. In fact, the best bone broth will contain enough natural gelatin to set up like Jello when it cools in the refrigerator.
- For joint pain, it seems everyone is buying glucosamine at the store. Glucosamine is naturally occurring in bone broth. Skip the expensive supplements and drink a cup of bone broth every day to help with your join pain and arthritis.
Bone broth impacts digestion, allergies, immune health, brain health, and much, much more.
Easy, Crock-Pot Bone Broth Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 + pounds of quality bones
- 2 Tablespoons vineger
- Scraps & trimmings from carrot garlic, onions, celery
- Sea salt to taste
- Pepper to taste
- Enough water to completely cover the bones
Instructions
- Brown any meaty bones you might be using for the bone broth. You can do this either on top of the stove or in the oven.
- After browning your meat, place the bones in your crock pot along with the remaining ingredients.
- Let your crock-pot sit and simmer for 24 – 72 hours.
- Strain your bone broth.
- STOP! Don't throw away your bones.
- Save the bones and decide how you want to store your broth, if you're not using it immediately. If you will be using it soon, store the broth in the refrigerator. If you’d like to save the broth for later use, freeze the broth.
- You can make multiple batches of bone broth out of each batch of bones. I usually make at least 4 batches, sometimes more! Continue to use the bones until they disintegrate or you don’t want to make any more broth.
Notes on Bone Broth:
I usually make beef broth, but you can make broth from bones of any other animal you have on hand. We purchase 1/2 of a grass-fed cow at a time and always request soup bones. Remember, the healthier the animal, the better quality broth you will get.
Before making my broth to store, I typically brown my meaty bones on the stove and use stew meat and vegetables to make stew with my first batch of bone broth. If you choose to do this, be sure to remove and save your bones after your stew is finished so you can continue to pull the nutrients out of the bones.
Often, I save some broth in the refrigerator to be used in the next few days. With the remainder I use ice cube trays to freeze my broth. This way I can grab just 1 or 2 cubes if I want to use the broth when steaming veggies, or I can get a bunch out for soup or a healthy warm drink.
Use your bone broth in soups, stews, gravies, to steam or saute veggies, or just drink cups of bone broth each day for added health benefits.
When You Can’t Make It Yourself…
When I’m short on time or I can’t get access to bones from grass-fed animals, I buy my broth from Kettle & Fire. We absolutely love their broth.
- First, they use organic chicken and cow bones from small family farms that don’t use any hormones or antibiotics. Plus, they only use the bone with the highest collagen content.
- They don’t add any artificial ingredients or preservatives—just filtered water, organic veggies, sea salt, and herbs. Because of the special way they package their broth, no additives, additional sodium, or preservatives are needed!
- Best of all, their broth is tasty—tastier than any chicken or beef stock you might use.
Check out their special offers and learn how you can get this broth shipped right to your door.
Unfortunately, DH says he hates the smell of the chicken broth cooking overnight and won’t let me do it. So I was only able to do it a few hours an get stock, not bone broth. 🙁
What about beef? I actually make beef bone broth most often.
I love making bone broth in my slow cooker! And appreciate all the facts you shared here. I’ve been sipping bone broth non-stop for 2 weeks now as I recover from pneumonia, and it’s been a real blessing, although I’m starting to get a little tired of it, so I’ve been trying to get creative like putting a 1/2 cup in my smoothie. It might sound weird, but it’s actually not even noticeable with all the fruits and veggies I add. 🙂
Praying you and your family are finally all getting better! I know how miserable pneumonia is :(.
I did turkey bones for a really long time like you said, but the broth didn’t gel. I read somewhere that the gelatin can break down if it’s cooked too long—I’m not sure if that was the problem or something else, but I was disappointed. We used it all, though, and it tasted great.
Yes, I’ve read that if you boil your broth too vigorously it can break the gel down. You want to focus on broth that is just barely simmering. Our crockpot does this beautifully and we’ve never had problems with the gelatin breaking down. Another thing it could be is too much water in proportion to the bones. Even if it doesn’t gel, I’m sure your broth still had lots of the good stuff in it! 🙂
“The fat from the first 2-3 hour boil NEEDS to be consumed (or skimmed off and saved) after this time period has elapsed. If the fat continues to boil it will become rancid.”
eatbeauitful.net says this on her website for the gaps diet is this true? Do you do this?
I had not ever read that, but it makes sense. I’ve never done this, but I typically use the first go-round of bone broth for some sort of soup. After that, I freeze it and save it for later.
To Rena,
I can’t cook foods in my house during the day, because my husband sleeps during the day from his medical problems (and horrible medications that he is dependant on – hopefully not for too much longer, he is slowly weaning off them) and can’t tolerate even toast cooking, even with his bedroom door shut and the hall door closed. So to overcome this issue of not being able to cook in the day, I have set up a crockpot and/or single hotplate on my back porch, connected to a power source. I can now cook jams, casseroles, broth, even baking on my porch. I even borrowed my Mum’s portable round convection oven to “roast” the beef bones. All I have to do is shut the back door, and the smell stays outside, the heat stays outside (Its still summer down-under in Australia), and we’re all happy… as long as my children don’t see me sneak in the chicken feet!!!!! If you don’t have a back porch, maybe you have a power source in the garage??
Lovely recipe with wholesome ingredients! It’s similar to the one we use for our broth. I love bone broth and always have some on hand. Thank you for sharing this!
You’re welcome 🙂
I want to try this!! Any idea how long it can be stored?
If I’m not using it within a couple of days I freeze it. I’ve had it in the freezer for a couple of months without any problems. It doesn’t ever last longer than though 🙂
This may be a dumb question, but I see no mention of how much water you use. Do you not need water when making beef bone broth? I tend to make it with chicken and add water, but alas, my last batch was lackluster for reasons I have yet to figure out. It only jelled some, but not completely, even though the bones broke easily, and it had an odd smell (hubby refused to eat the soup I made with it). Wonder if I added too much cider vinegar? Perhaps it was the fact that I left all the skin and drippings from the chicken I roasted in the crockpot earlier. Perhaps it was the number of leg bones that I saved from my oven fried chicken (they still had a little of the breeding and coconut cooking spray I used). I’ll keep in mind the whole rancid fat issue next time. Maybe that was it. Thanks.
My apologies for neglecting to mention the water – yes, I do use water! I make sure to completely cover the bones in water. Sorry your last batch of chicken broth didn’t turn out well. I’m not personally a huge fan of drinking straight-up bone broth even though I know it’s good for me, so maybe your husband is just the same way? I don’t add a lot of ACV to mine, so maybe try cutting back on that a little bit. You don’t need a lot to help pull the nutrients out of the bones.
I’ve got my bone broth cooking in the crockpot right now. We will hit 24 hrs soon. Do you think longer is better? I make stock all of the time, but this is the first time I have let it cook so long. Sort of a no-brainer with a crockpot. My best friend, Sammi, was over today and she said some lady was on tv last night talking about the health benefits of bone broth and her hubby said…she’s nuts! Ha Ha. We had a good laugh over it this morning at my house when she saw what I was cooking. Our hubbies will come around eventually.
I don’t think longer is necessarily better. You’ll have a more concentrated bone broth as you cook it longer and some of the water evaporates. I usually get a few uses out of the bones, but if you cook it a really long time, you likely won’t get as many uses. That’s ok, just more concentrated 🙂
That’s funny! I’m sure your hubbies will come around if for no other reason than they’ll enjoy all the yummy stuff you make with the bone broth. Nothing speaks to a mans heart like good foot 😉
I didn’t see mention of adding water to your recipe….though it’s a no-brainer. 🙂 Just curious how much water you add to the pot? Just enough to cover? More? Less? Thanks!
Wow! Ha, you’re right. I didn’t even mention that. Yes, I just cover the bones and a little bit more 🙂 Hope that helps!
Hi I started this in my crockpot yesterday afternoon about 2pm. I tasted it and it tastes burnt. I had it on low the whole time. I used two small carcasses and some legs and thigh bones, one big onion, three carrots, the center of a celery with leaves. Pink Himalayan salt and pepper. Any thoughts? I’ve seen some recipes say that you can cook up to 72 hours and I’m not sure if I want to do that.