Bone Broth – A Beautiful Healing Helper!👨🏽‍🍳+ Vegetarian Option!! 🥕

Introduction: In most traditional cultures, making and consuming bone broth was extremely common. Bone broth is deeply nourishing to the yin of the body. Bones create the structure of our physical form, and the connective tissues represent strength, resilience and flexibility. On the physical level, bone broth can boost immunity, help heal the gut, and build healthy muscles, skin and bones. When we feel something intuitively, we feel it “deep in our bones.” So energetically, bone broth is strengthening that relationship as well.

Recipes: Below are 3 recipes for bone broth; chicken, beef and a vegetarian modification that uses blood/bone building herbs as its base.

Dosing: When healing the gut or when healing from a broken bone, a surgery or illness, bone broth is an amazing ally. It can be consumed daily for a period of weeks or months and then on an “as-needed” basis.

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Carisa’s Chicken Bone Broth

Step 1: Make Stock

Ingredients:

·      Whole, free range chicken (VERY important, commercial chicken bones store too many toxins)

·      2-3 cloves garlic

·      1 bay leaf

·      Sea salt, to taste

Directions:

1. Remove giblet bag (save it for the bone broth, but only if you love the taste)

2. Place chicken in a large stock pot or crock pot with enough water to cover.

3. Add a few cloves of chopped garlic and a bay leaf.

4. Simmer until the chicken starts to fall apart when handled, approximately an hour.

5. Separate the chicken from the stock and set it aside to cool.

6. Place any vegetables (save the trimmings) and some of the chicken meat back in the stock to make soup OR save the stock to add to the bone broth, which you will make next.

7. Salt the stock near the end of cooking, if you are adding veggies and making soup.

Step 2: Make Bone Broth

Ingredients:

·      Chicken bones and bits from making stock

·      Vegetable trimmings

·      Whole veggies (if desired)

·      Dried or fresh herbs

·      Apple cider vinegar

Directions:

1. Separate the chicken meat from the bones, skin and other bits.

2. Set the meat aside to use in soups or other dishes, and

3. Place the rest in a crock pot or stock pot along with the vegetables such as chopped onion, celery, carrots, potatoes and sea vegetables like dulse, arame and wakame and herbs like garlic, oregano, sage, thyme, bay, turmeric. Don't be shy with the quantities, you are making a broth concentrate, so intense flavor is good.

4. Add about ¼ cup of apple cider vinegar, (or more if you like ACV). The acid in the vinegar helps pull out the minerals and other nutrients in the bone, so the more acid you have, the more leaching will take place.

5. Add enough water to cover, and allow it to simmer for as long as you can. I like to use a crock pot and cook the broth overnight, but you can go for as long as 18-24 hours.

6. Once the cooking is finished, strain out and discard the solids, and allow the broth to cool until it is safe to handle.

Store in glass containers in refrigerator and consume within 7 days or freeze. Another option is to pour broth (after cooling) into ice cube trays and freeze, turning each batch of cubes out into a ziploc bag for storage in your freezer.

One cup is about ¼ cup of concentrated broth, so keep that in mind for recipes. Try diluting some with water until you get the flavor you like and keep that in mind for future dishes. 

Beef Bone Broth

Ingredients:

•      4 pounds beef bones with marrow. Add ox tail for extra richness. Grassfed and/or organic strongly preferred.

•      4 carrots, chopped

•      4 celery stalks, chopped

•      2 medium onions, peel on, sliced in half lengthwise and quartered

•      4 garlic cloves, peel on and smashed

•      1 tsp turmeric

•      1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

•      1 teaspoon whole peppercorns

•      2 bay leaves

•      3 sprigs fresh thyme

•      5-6 sprigs parsley

•      ¼ cup apple cider vinegar

•      18-20 cups cold water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, place beef bones on cookie sheet or pan and roast for 20 minutes.

2. Place all ingredients, including the bones and any drippings, in a 10 quart capacity crock-pot (if crock pot is smaller, just add less water).

3. Add in water.

4. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce and simmer gently, skimming the fat that rises to the surface occasionally.

5. Simmer for 24-48 hours. The longer the simmer, the more rich the broth.

6. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

7. Discard solids and strain remainder in a bowl through a colander. Let stock cool to room temperature, cover and chill.

Use within a week or freeze up to 3 months. 

Vegetarian Bone Broth Recipe

Note: if you are interested in purchasing the herbs in this recipe and don’t know where to source them, feel free to ask Jill.

·      Shan Yao/Chinese Yam Rhizome; 9g (roughly 0.3 ounce)

·      Bai Zhu/Atractylodes – 9g (roughly 0.3 ounce)

·      Dang Gui/Chinese Angelica Root – 9g (roughly 0.3 ounce)

·      Gou Teng/Uncaria “Cat’s Claw”- 9g (roughly 0.3 ounce)

·      Huang Qi/Astragulus Root – 9g (roughly 0.3 ounce)

·      Shittake mushrooms – 6-8 mushrooms

·      Reishi mushrooms, dried – 2-3 pieces

·      Black sesame seeds – 1T

·      Cabbage – ½ head

·      Onion – small, chopped

·      Celery – 3-4 stalks, chopped

·      Carrots – 2-3, chopped

·      Ginger – 1 thumb sized, chopped

·      Garlic (optional) – 1-2 heads

Crock Pot Instructions:

Soak everything for 30 minutes in 8 Cups Water in crock pot. Turn heat on high for first hour or 2 then turn down to low overnight and/or for 12 hours. Strain and drink 1 cup twice a day.

Stove Top Instructions:

Soak for 30 minutes in 8 cups water, bring to boil, then turn down and low simmer for 45 minutes. Strain and drink 1 cup twice a day.

Storage:

Store unused amount in refrigerator and warm up to drink. Whatever can not be consumed in 2-3 days should be frozen and thawed out as needed.