Homemade Bone Broth - A Nourishing Real Food for Full Body Health
I’ve come to think of bone broth as a culinary and nutritional staple in my home. Its long history and nutritional properties make it one of the best examples of using real food as medicine that I can think of. I’m grateful for bone broth's ability to heal and to make even the most simple homemade dishes taste incredible.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that I love the cozy feeling that making your own bone broth brings into the home. On any chilly winter day, you can bet that I probably have a pot of broth bubbling away on the stove. It helps warm the house, smells incredible, and doubles as a humidifier - it’s just a win all around in my book. In addition to all of these wonderful qualities, making your own bone broth can help spark some good old-fashioned food joy even after the winter blues set it.
So, in this blog post, we’re going to cover how you can make your own beautiful homemade bone broth, how to use it, ideas for how to store it, and what makes real bone broth such an incredibly healing food.
Let’s start with the fun stuff: how to make your own.
What You’ll Need:
A stock pot
Enough bones to fill your stock pot halfway
High-quality Sea Salt
I like Redmond’s Real Salt or Celtic Sea Salt
Vinegar or another form of acid
This could be apple cider vinegar, your favorite wine, or lemon juice
Enough water to fill your pot
A fine mesh strainer or sieve
A plan for using your broth right away or storing it
See Tips and Tricks for Making, Using, and Storing Your Homemade Bone Broth section
Optional additions: any aromatics that you like. Examples: a handful (or two) of your favorite herbs, garlic cloves, onions, shallots, leeks, or celery
My regular go-to’s are 5-6 cloves of organic garlic and a few stalks of fresh rosemary
How to Make Bone Broth: The Process
This isn’t really a hard and fast recipe. You honestly cannot mess this up and therefore, there are no strict rules to follow. So, instead of thinking of this as a recipe per se, think of it as a process that leaves plenty of room for you to experiment and learn about what you like and don’t like (as cooking should be, my friend 😉).
I like to simmer my broth for at least 24 hours. And I often space this over 2 days. That’s the process I outline here. You can decide if you like more or less time.
Step 1: Roast Your Bones
This is not required to make broth. But, if I’m working with raw bones, I like to roast them first. If I’m working with a carcass from a chicken I roasted earlier or other bones that have already been cooked, I skip this step. I think the roasting adds to the depth of flavor.
Preheat your oven to 400 F. Lay your bones out on a baking dish. Sprinkle on a healthy pinch of salt. Roast for 8-10 minutes. Bones do not have to be fully cooked.
Step 2: Fill Your Pot
Place your bones into your stock pot. Add a splash of acid (like apple cider vinegar), another healthy pinch of salt, and fill with water, leaving some headspace so it doesn’t bubble over. Bring it to a simmer. Let it bubble away all day. I shoot for 12 hours here. Once I reach bedtime, I simply turn the stove off and put a lid on my pot. You could move it to the refrigerator for the night if you prefer.
If you’re working with a smaller stock pot, you may need to add water as the liquid evaporates during the day so you don’t end up with burnt gelatin at the bottom of your pot. If your pot is big enough (and full enough) you may prefer to just let it simmer overnight.
Step 3: Add The Finishing Touches
The following morning, bring your broth back to a simmer. The goal is to simmer for another 12 hours. When there are roughly 6-8 hours remaining, that’s when to add your aromatics. I personally find adding fresh herbs sooner than that can cause some bitterness. But, you can decide what you prefer. You also want to stop adding any additional water at about this point. You want your broth to condense down and become thick and flavorful.
Step 4: Strain It & Skim The Fat
Once you’re done cooking your broth, you want to pour it through your fine mesh strainer/sieve and into another container (I use a glass bowl or a clean stock pot). Place your strained broth into the fridge and let it cool completely.
Once cooled, you can skim any excess fat off the top. I’d store this fat in a jar in the freezer and use it as cooking fat for future roasts, ground beef, potatoes - anything you like!
Tips and Tricks for Making, Using, and Storing Your Homemade Bone Broth (Plus: Money Saving Strategies)
Tip #1: Making Gelatinous Broth
If you’ve ever made your own bone broth you probably know that achieving that thick gelatinous bone broth can be hit or miss. It depends on the type of bones you’re using and how much cartilage and collagen they contain. If you want really thick gelatinous broth, your best bet is to add something really gelatinous to your stockpot. The best (and most healing) sources of real food gelatin that I’ve found for consistently making thick bone broth are pig’s feet, chicken feet, tendons, and knuckle bones (the bits with A LOT of cartilage and collagen). Try adding a few of either (or all) to your next pot of broth and see how thick and lovely it turns out.
Tip #2: Using Your Broth
Of course, you can use your homemade bone broth for obvious things like soups and stews. But, here are a few ideas for working your healthy homemade bone broth into your regular routine:
Start your morning or end your evening with a warm mug of salted broth.
Replace the water with bone broth when you’re cooking grains. We love bone broth rice in our house.
Add a few cubes of frozen broth anytime you’re cooking ground meat. You could do this for tacos, casseroles, or ground beef mixed with veggies. Tossing in some of your bone broth will add unmistakable flavor and a nutritious boost to your everyday meals.
But, it doesn’t have to be all about the broth. Here’s how you can also use some of the “scraps” from your broth-making:
If the bones you used have any meat on them, pull it off and use it as shredded meat. This works particularly well with beef and lamb bones and will make for some of the most tender shredded beef (or lamb) you’ve ever had!
Skim that fat off the top! As I mentioned before, you can freeze it and use it as healthy cooking fat in the future. I definitely do not recommend pouring it down the sink. 😉
Tip #3: Storing Your Broth
I freeze my bone broth. And, I do it in a couple of different ways that make using our broth easy.
Freezing Method #1: Freeze in large jars. I save bone broth in large jars when I know I’m going to want a larger quantity of broth (i.e. to be used for soups and stews). Sometimes we use these as drinking broth as well.
Bonus Tip: if you are going to freeze your broth, I suggest finding jars that do NOT have shoulders. You want cylindrical jars in the freezer because they are less likely to break. I use Weck’s Cylindrical Jars for this purpose.
Freezing Method #2: Use silicone molds to freeze smaller servings of broth. I like to use silicone cupcake molds to freeze broth in smaller servings. It makes these small pucks of frozen broth. So, you can pull a few out for a warm mug of broth or pop a couple into a pan of ground beef that you’re cooking for dinner. It just makes the broth easier to access and incorporate into our routine.
I usually store these broth pucks in Stasher Bags, but you could use any freezer-friendly food storage container.
Tip #4: Make Real Bone Broth an Affordable Staple in Your Home
Making your own broth isn’t just good for your health, it’s actually pretty dang good for your financial wellbeing, too. Here are some ways you can save money (and reduce waste) that all boil down to a simple pot of broth:
If you can, consider buying your meat in bulk directly from a local farmer or rancher. The upfront cost will be higher, but when you break it down pound for pound, this is the most economical way to purchase high-quality protein (and fat, and bones…). And, you can use all of the leftover bones to make broth.
When you do this, I recommend telling your butcher you want ALL the bones and tendons - not just the soup bones.
Bonus tip: If your family can’t afford meat in bulk yet - consider splitting a quarter beef with another family or friends. You will save so much money on your grocery bill with this one investment that you will soon be able to afford your own. Just start somewhere.
If you are cooking something with the bone in, always save those bones to make broth later. Whether it’s bone-in steaks, roasts, a whole chicken, or a turkey at Thanksgiving - keep those bones in a bag in the freezer. Once your bag is full, pull them out and make a pot of broth!
Have I mentioned that you can skim the fat off your broth and use it later? I appreciate that they’re available at most grocery stores now, but the price of healthy cooking fats is incredibly high. This is a really good opportunity to get scrappy and cut the cost of your food bill all while supporting your health.
Now let’s talk about what makes bone broth a healing food. And, the different ailments it can support.
Bone Broth As Medicine
Real broth dates back tens of thousands of years. There’s even evidence that our stone-age ancestors made bone broth using hot rocks and the stomach of their kill (in lieu of a good stock pot). Bone broth is a traditional human food in every sense of the phrase. We evolved into the people we are and the bodies we have today while eating it. And, in my experience, those are always the foods that make the best medicine. It’s what our bodies know and need.
What Makes Real Food Bone Broth So Nourishing?
All of the healing power of bone broth is wrapped up in these big gelatinous protein molecules called collagen. Collagen is not only the most abundant protein found in bone broth, but it’s also the most abundant protein found in you (it makes up about 35% of all protein in the human body).
But, what is collagen, exactly? It’s a structural protein that holds your entire body together. From your skin all the way down to your blood vessels. Collagen is an essential building block for healthy hair, skin, eyes, bones, tendons, placenta, your internal organs, and even your arteries. Collagen also plays an important role in your immune system, which means high collagen foods can be one way to support a body suffering from autoimmunity and even neurodegenerative diseases - more on that in a bit.
Collagen is the key healing component of real bone broth. And, it’s the amino acids (aka protein building blocks) and trace minerals that collagen contains that make it so. It’s those nutrients that help support the following chronic health issues.
Quick side note before we dive into the specific health benefits: even with all of its healing properties - bone broth is no magic bullet. This feels like a good time to remind you that those magic bullets don’t actually exist. To reap all of the benefits of real bone broth, we need to consume it in the context of a real food diet with plenty of other healthy proteins, fats, and micronutrients. You cannot out-broth a diet full of processed gunk or a lifestyle that is out of alignment with your body’s natural rhythms, my friend.
Inflamed Skin
If you run a quick web search or sift through YouTube videos about bone broth one of the most common anecdotal reports you will see is ‘bone broth helped heal my skin’. Some of this is purely cosmetic. Improved elasticity, fewer wrinkles, the ever-sought-after glow. And some of these stories highlight people who have struggled with incredibly difficult ailments - like psoriasis or scleroderma - making a full recovery.
So what is it about bone broth that can help us reinvigorate or potentially heal our dull and inflamed skin?
It all comes back to collagen. Consuming collagen-rich foods (which includes bone broth, but also skin-on poultry, well-cooked sinewy roasts, and ground beef) provides your body with an abundance of several skin-healing amino acids.
Collagen provides you with proline, glycine, glutamine, and alanine. Several studies demonstrate the healing effects collagen (and its amino acids) can have on skin issues such as atopic dermatitis [1] [2] [3] [4], psoriasis [5] [6] [7], wound healing [8], and even improving the appearance of wrinkles [9].
Bone Broths Impact on Your Bones & Joints
To remain resilient and resistant to fractures, our bones actually need to be a little bit flexible. This flexibility allows them to absorb shock and bounce back without breaking. And, the flex comes from the collagen that your bones contain.
Conventional medicine struggles with managing weakened bones long-term (i.e. Osteopenia or Osteoporosis) partly because we haven’t figured out how to improve or maintain the flexibility of bone with drugs. One of the primary concerns with commonly used osteoporosis drugs, like alendronate or ibandronate (these belong to a class of drugs commonly referred to as bisphosphonates) is that over time they may actually cause your bones to become more brittle [10] [11] [12]. These drugs do support the mineralization of bone, but they do nothing to support the collagen matrix that makes your bones resistant to breakage. This is why it’s often recommended to limit bisphosphonate treatments to 5 years and then take a ‘drug holiday’. The concern is that long-term continuous use may actually cause microcracks in bone (by constantly increasing the hardness without simultaneously addressing the flexibility issue) and ultimately increase your risk of fracture [13].
A simple and natural way to support healthy bones long term is to eat more collagen-rich foods. Give your body the essential building blocks it needs to create and maintain healthy bones in the first place. Studies do show that collagen intake can help improve bone mineral density in women with osteoporosis and osteopenia [14] [15]. And, if drug therapy feels like the right choice for you, eating more collagen-rich foods is something you could still add to your current treatment regimen. Another way to help yourself.
On top of that, collagen helps support joint health. It can decrease pain and stiffness in the setting of Osteoarthritis [16] [17] and may even improve symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis [18] [19] - a nod to collagen's ability to support the structural health of joints and calm autoimmunity.
That Said, Broth is Not a Great Source of Calcium…
One common misconception about real broth related to bone health is that it’s a good source of calcium. I’ve even heard people say that bone broth is comparable to cow’s milk in terms of its calcium content. But, this doesn’t appear to hold up. Though bone broth does provide a healthy ratio of minerals (like calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus), it doesn’t provide very much of any of them. By most accounts (from both the USDA and nutritional labels from the few real bone broth brands sold in stores) one cup of broth likely provides less than 2% of your daily calcium needs [20].
But, despite its potentially disappointing calcium content, the moral of the story here is still that if you are looking for a way to support your bone and joint health with real food - whole-food collagen is one of the best medicines for that. And, well-made bone broth is a reliable way to incorporate that collagen into your diet.
Bone Broth is Beneficial for Your Immune System and Your Brain
Your brain and your immune system are intricately connected. More and more researchers and medical professionals are recognizing neurodegenerative diseases as being caused, at least in part, by an autoimmune response. Something is causing the immune system to overreact leading to the malfunction of the nervous system as seen in Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s disease. As with all chronic illnesses, neurodegenerative diseases are obviously very complex and their causes are multifactorial - do not worry I am not about to claim that a person can reverse such complicated diseases by simply drinking a cup of broth.
However, prioritizing collagen-rich foods such as broth may be one way to improve the symptoms or prevent the progression of such ailments, especially when other lifestyle factors are being implemented. And, that’s because collagen is known to play a very important role in our immune system. It appears to have the ability to help regulate an overactive immune response [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]. Which may have implications for not only neurodegeneration and autoimmunity but also cancer [26].
Deficiencies in collagen are associated with an increased risk of developing amyloid plaques (these are the misfolded proteins found in the brain that are thought to play a crucial role in the development of Alzheimer's) [27] [28] [29]. And, increasing the collagen in our diets has been shown to improve overall brain and nervous system function [30] [31].
Something to note here is that your body's ability to synthesize collagen is impaired by vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Including (but, not limited to) low Vitamin D levels, which is an epidemic in our society due to spending so much of our time indoors and constant exposure to artificial light. We need adequate sunlight for Vitamin D and collagen to fall into place (among many other things). We need nourishing foods, yes, but we also need to spend time outside in nature. I mention this to highlight again that collagen is no magic bullet. It has to be consumed within the context of an evolutionarily appropriate diet and lifestyle for our species. If you’re looking to optimize your health, it’s important that you start to see the whole picture and not just the bits and pieces.
Bone Broth & Your Gut Health
I mentioned before that broth contains glutamine and glycine. And, these are very important amino acids for your gut health. They feed and rejuvenate the villi (these are little finger-like projections that are responsible for absorbing the nutrients in your food) and the lining of your intestines [32] [33]. This means broth likely has medicinal implications for intestinal permeability (AKA Leaky Gut), which is often considered to be the root cause of autoimmunity.
And, the fact that the amino acids found in collagen are so healing for your gut may be the underlying mechanism by which it supports your immune system and nervous system. We often think our guts are just responsible for digesting the food we eat. But, the guts' role in our overall health is much broader than that. Most of your immune cells are housed in your digestive system [34] [35] [36] [37] and most of your neurotransmitters are created there as well [38] [39] [40]. By improving the health of your gut, you are essentially improving all areas of your health.
Collagen may also improve symptoms of severe digestive disorders such as Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome [41] [42] [43].
Your body is one big interconnected system with all of these different parts working together. And, making your way back to traditional healing foods such as homemade bone broth is just one way to support every piece of you.
Where is All of This Healing Collagen Found?
Collagen is found in animal foods. It’s found in bone, skin, and connective tissue. And, anywhere there is a lot of cartilage, you can bet there is plenty of collagen, too. Examples of collagen-rich foods include pigs feet, chicken feet, pig ears, knuckle bones, tendons, trachea, muscle meats (i.e. ground beef, ground lamb, etc), and whole skin-on poultry.
I often wonder if the collagen content of a beautifully roasted chicken or whole duck is what makes these such satisfying comfort foods. In a world where many of us are seriously lacking in our collagen intake - a whole roasted chicken feels like a relief to our collagen deprived bodies.
Supplments Versus Whole Food Sources of Collagen
There was a time when I personally used and recommended collagen supplements. That’s no longer the case. Over the years I’ve learned that choosing supplements over whole food is often a sign that we’re just looking for that imaginary magic bullet. It’s a symptom of our tendency to hyperfixate on the bits and pieces - and we need to look at the whole picture.
The reality is that we understand so very little about food and our bodies. We cannot adequately recreate what whole food provides in a lab. The foods that we evolved to eat have been slowly and meticulously modified by mother nature over millions of years. We are simply not intelligent enough to out smart that tedious process. I think the most honest solution to our health issues is to get back to those foods that nature has always provided to us, take responsibility for preparing them ourselves, and surrender to the unknowns. We don’t have to understand every little molecule to know what makes our bodies feel good.
On top of that, collagen supplements are highly processed. They’re extracted and bleached and who knows what else. They hardly resemble real food. You can get a feel for some of the processing techniques used to create commercialized collagen products with the following references: [44] [45].
So, if you ask me to recommend a high-quality collagen supplement, I’m just going to tell you to go home and fill up your stock pot.
Distinguishing Real Food Bone Broth from Processed Imitators
When packaged broth first appeared on grocery store shelves, it was the real deal. But, as time went on those real bones, collagen, and flavorful veggies were inevitably replaced with cheaper products such as thickening agents and synthetic flavor enhancers. Today, most broth available in the grocery store isn’t really broth at all.
So, the best way to ensure you’re eating real bone broth is to start making your own. And, your second best option is to always read the ingredients list of any pre-made broth you’re buying.
Real food broth is made with simple ingredients. Filtered water, bones, veggies, salts, and herbs. If you see anything else in that ingredients list - it’s a processed product.
One of the most common flavor enhancers used in processed broth is monosodium glutamate (aka MSG), which has been implicated in metabolic diseases and may contribute to neurotoxicity [46] [47]. Something else to look out for in store-bought broth and bouillon.
Hoping this blog post inspires you to make your own beautful bone broth.
