How to make a delicious, healthy bone broth at home
Bone broth's hot and getting hotter. A while back, when bone broth began trending, I headed to my local health foods market to get some and was stunned by the price. Stunned is not an overstatement; a 16-ounce box of organic beef bone broth was nearly $8. Holy cow! Bone broth is supposed to be healthier than regular broth, even organic ones. They're both broths so, what's the difference?
It appears that regular beef broth uses more meat than bones and is simmered for a shorter time producing thinner results in both flavor and consistency.
What should characterize a true bone broth is how long it's cooked (usually 12 hours or more), which results in a deeper flavor and a gelatin-like consistency when refrigerated.
What's the health value? For one: collagen. Due to the long simmer, with lots of bones, a bone broth should be rich in collagen.
Why does that matter?
Depending on who's asked, that collagen supports healthier hair, skin, and nails, as well as the new concern, a healthy gut. One "medical" website claims that bone broth may: protect the joints; help fight osteoarthritis; help reduce inflammation; aid sleep and support weight loss. If all that's true, bone broth is a miracle in a box.
Grandmother Mauer taught me how she made regular broth, and one of her unique additions was apple cider vinegar. She said that vinegar's acid helped move protein and calcium out of the bones and produced a better broth.
Early in my cooking life, I wanted to make a beef broth from which I was planning to make a beef barley soup. I headed off to a close-by Chicago butcher shop where they gave me some beef knuckle and shin bones for free. Using Grandma Mauer's method, I added a bunch of veggies plus vinegar to the pot along with my bones and let that simmer for 4 to 5 hours. What surprised me was how clear my broth looked at the end. It didn't look like the beef broth I expected.
My brother, Tom, at that time an up-and-coming chef, explained why by first asking me a question: "How long did you roast the beef bones?
My response: "Ummmm … not at all."
Tom explained that the bones should be roasted for at least an hour at high heat until deeply browned. Then make the broth the same way as before.
The next time I made beef broth I did exactly that and ended up with a beautiful brown broth with an even beefier flavor. Every book I've recently read that includes bone broth in health-producing food lists they recommend making bone broth from scratch at home. OK.
Several years ago, I stopped making broth with anything but organic meat or bones. For this experiment, I bought (bones aren't free anymore) a little over 3 pounds of beef bones from my supplier of grass-fed, grass-finished beef. They cost $6 a pound. I did as I always do and roasted those bones to a dark, caramel brown, while I prepared the vegetables and herbs and spices.
I used bottled spring water (why go to all that trouble and expense and use tap water?) and vinegar and brought it all to a gentle simmer and then placed the pot into a 225-degree oven for 16 hours. You can imagine the beefy-aroma that filled my kitchen.
My high-quality, homemade bone broth probably cost more than store-bought (now I know why they charge so much), but the deep flavor was amazing. Here's how I made it.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.