Bone Broth

I think it’s been about…5 years since I bought broth or stock packaged from a store. Ever since I discovered 1) the health benefits of homemade bone broth and B) the cost effectiveness of making it myself, I haven’t looked back.

Here’s how the broth-making shindig usually goes down:

1. I eat chicken. And other meat with bones.
2. I deposit bones into a gallon Ziploc bag in the freezer.
3. I repeat steps 1-2 until the bag is full.
4. I dump the bones in water, turn on the stove, walk away and forget about it for a day.
5. I come back to the stove to find a pot full of broth.

Magic.

There are about a million recipes for bone broth on various Paleo blogs throughout the interwebs, so that should tell you it’s pretty hard to mess up.

If you don’t eat much bone-in meat, you could try to find a farmer or butcher in your area who would either sell bones to you for cheap or maybe even give them away for free.

Once the broth is finished, you may run into three common issues (yes, I’ve learned the hard way in all instances). All three end in a dangerous game of Will-I-Eat-Shards-Of-Glass, as your jars will quite possibly crack in the freezer.

1. Use only wide-mouth glass jars for storage, not narrow-mouth. You can leave the lids relatively loose.
2. Leave an inch or two of space at the top of each jar after pouring in the broth.
3. Let the broth cool in jars completely in the fridge before transferring to the freezer.

I defrost the broth a quart or two at a time in the fridge. I drink it a mug of broth with a little sea salt and Nori seaweed, or I use it to poach meat and veggies.