Best Bone Broth Ever
In my years on this (ongoing) healing journey, I have really come to believe that health is health is health. Joint health, immune health, mental health, it’s all the same thing. But most importantly, it all starts with gut health.
This is not a novel concept. Hippocrates is credited as having said that “all disease begins in the gut.” I, and many others, believe that all health starts there, too. For example….
Did you know that 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut?
Or that the gut is home to 70-80% of your immune cells?
Or that in a recent study, 100% of women with endometriosis also had leaky gut?
Or that there are studies linking poor gut health to:
*rheumatoid arthritis
*endometriosis
*erectile dysfunction
*ADHD
*autism
*eczema
*acne
*lupus
*multiple sclerosis
*diabetes
*cancer?!?!
You might also have noticed that all of the diseases I just listed are extremely prevalent today, and this is no coincidence. Chronic stress, inflammatory foods, and exposure to toxic chemicals create a perfect recipe for a condition known as “leaky gut.” Basically, these factors degrade the lining of our gut so that particles of food are able to escape and enter the rest of the body, which creates more inflammation, because they’re not supposed to be there!
So what are we supposed to do when stress, crap food, and toxic chemicals are three of the basic components of modern American life?
Enter bone broth!
Surely by now you’ve heard of bone broth. It’s another ancient tradition that’s making a well-deserved comeback in our modern era. Rich, grounding, and deeply nourishing, bone broth is the medicine that most of us need during these times of nutrient-poor food and chronic stress.
Bone broth contains both gelatin and collagen, which provide an abundance of healing, restoring, inflammation reducing amino acids. These amino acids, including glutamine, cysteine, arginine, and proline help to heal and seal your gut lining so it doesn’t “leak.” Bone broth also provides glucosamine and chondroitin, which are essential to building cartilage. It also contains minerals in an easy-to-absorb form: calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur, and more.
There’s a reason that chicken soup has been considered a healing food for generations, and now there are actual studies to back the tradition up!
Making soup out of bones is a practice as old as humans, and I think that old practices tend to be especially healing to modern forms of disease. Bones are the building blocks of mammals, and so when we take in their essence, we are building ourselves up. I also just love the full circle feeling of using every single part of the animals who sacrificed their lives to feed me and my family. I think it provides a sense of reverence and connection to the natural world that I am always craving.
Ok so how do you make it??
I have been modifying this recipe for about 3 years and it finally feels delicious enough to share with the world. I have a Google Keep note on my phone that had the title “Working Bone Broth Recipe” forever and I would modify it every time I made a batch. I just recently permanently changed the title to “Best Bone Broth Ever!”
I began by following various recipes from the internet and from books, but honestly it never tasted good enough to just drink a mug of it, so I never did! I would cook with it (rice, pasta, beans, lentils, soup, etc.) but I really wanted to make a broth that was tasty enough to drink on its own. And here she is!
(This recipe is specifically for chicken bone broth. My beef bone broth recipe still feels like a work in progress.)
So your first step is to collect bones. Personally, I keep a gallon ziploc bag in my freezer and every time I have chicken bones, I throw them in there. When the bag is full, I make broth. This is probably about once a month because I roast a lot of bone-in chicken breasts. You can also visit your local butcher shops and ask them for bones. You can even ask your neighbors to keep bones for you! You also want skin and cartilage, and adding feet in is an incredible source of gelatin, which is incredibly beneficial to gut health. I want to note here that it is very important to use the bones of healthy animals, preferably ones who were grass-fed. If you are using the bones of animals who were treated with antibiotics and hormones, unfortunately that stuff will be in their bones. I have read that you can remove the impurities by boiling the bones for 10 or so minutes and skimming off the stuff that rises to the top. I personally don’t take this risk, mostly because I feed my broth to my baby, but obviously you can assess your own risk level and do what feels right and accessible to you.
So once you have your bones, this is what you do:
Place your bones on a baking sheet. They can still be frozen, I haven’t found it to make any difference in the flavor.
Quarter one large onion or two small onions and place them on the baking sheet.
Smash 6 or 7 cloves of garlic and place them on the sheet, too.
Drizzle the bones, onions, and garlic with avocado oil and apple cider vinegar and toss or brush to coat.
Place the baking sheet in the oven and roast at 400 for 20 minutes.
While you’re waiting, rough chop 2 carrots and a piece of ginger about the size of your thumb and throw all that in your crock pot.
Add to the crock pot:
*seaweed (a couple strips of kombu or 3 TBSP wakame flakes)
*a few slices of reishi mushroom
*1 TBSP dried chopped turmeric root
*1 TBSP whole black peppercorns
*2 bay leaves
*a sprig of fresh rosemary or 2 tsp dried rosemary
*a generous splash of apple cider vinegar
Add the roasted bones, onions, and garlic to the crock pot.
Add just enough filtered water to cover everything
Set your crock pot to high and wait about 4-5 hours
Strain out your broth and repeat! Add more water and ACV and start over. Each subsequent batch will need more time. I usually do my second batch overnight and my third batch for like 12 hours. 3 rounds is usually the most I can get out of a bag of bones. You’ll know the bones are spent when you can easily break them with your hands. (Bonus: you can feed the smushy bones to your dogs! I remove the onions and ginger and keep the rest in the fridge and can feed my two dogs for about a week with this.)
You can store the broth in the fridge for about 5 days or you can freeze it. I use these large silicone ice cube trays and then store them in gallon ziplocs. You can also just fill freezer or quart ziplocs and freeze them flat and then store them upright like books to save room in your freezer.
Notes:
You may have noticed that my recipe didn’t include salt. That’s because I find it kind of gets reabsorbed into the bones and you end up having to add more anyway, so rather than waste it in the cooking process, I just salt it when I drink it or use it.
I want to say a little something about kale. My first two years of bone broth included kale stems. I would save them in a bag in my freezer just like the bones and include them in my broth because they are such an incredible source of vitamins and minerals. But here’s the thing…the broth didn’t taste good! And as a result, I wouldn’t drink it. The best medicine is one you actually take, so I revised my recipe and left the kale out. You are absolutely welcome to experiment with kale or other greens and see how you like it.
This recipe is pretty simple and can easily be modified. You can switch out the reishi mushrooms for any other medicinal mushroom- shiitake, lion’s mane, turkey tail, hen of the woods, whatever floats your boat! You could also switch it out for another bitter medicinal like burdock root or calendula flowers. But I would be careful and not go too overboard unless you love the bitter flavor. I find that the ginger, garlic, turmeric, and onion provide just enough yumminess to balance out the bitter of 4-5 whole reishi slices, so I try not to mess too much with that ratio. Other fun add ins could include any fresh herbs you have growing like thyme, sage, oregano, basil, or parsley.
What to do with your broth
Drink it! Add some high quality salt and enjoy a delicious mug of this stuff. But you can also cook rice, pasta, beans, and lentils with it- a great way to sneak nutrition in for kiddos!- and use it as a base for soups. I use it as a base for my medicinal chicken soup, which I hope to be sharing on here soon. Make a big batch and drop it on the doorstep of a friend with a new baby, or a neighbor recovering from surgery, or a family member who’s sick. Just remind them to add salt!
I hope you all enjoy this recipe and that it helps you find good health!
And if you’d like a video tutorial, you can watch my reel on Instagram.