Bone Broth: The Medicinal Elixir You Should Be Drinking Every Day
The Return of a Traditional Nutritional Powerhouse
Although bone broth has enjoyed a sudden resurgence over the last few years, bone broth has been a fundamental, even mandatory, part of most peoples’ diets around the world for thousands of years.
Why is bone broth so nutritious?
The vitamins, minerals, and collagen that one gets from bone broth have so many nourishing benefits for the human body that they’re almost too numerous to list. This doesn’t even include the benefits derived from the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) point of view. Here’s a short list of the therapeutic benefits of regularly sipping on nourishing broth:
Speed recovery time from injury. Bone broth was a part of Kobe Bryant’s repertoire for staying healthy and bouncing back more quickly when injury occurred. It’s the amino acids in the broth that help speed recovery and the proteins that help with inflammation.
Improved sleep. Another important part of recovery and a person’s general health is sleep. Bone broth has glycine, an inhibitory neurotransmitter, which helps a person relax and can improve your quality of sleep thus helping a person to feel less tired. (Raise your hand if you could stand to be more relaxed, get better sleep, and feel less tired!)
Regular intake of bone broth can also help heal a person’s gut. It’s the gelatin from bone broth that elicits this response. Whether you experience symptoms of digestive imbalance like constipation or loose stools, or a more severe condition like leaky gut syndrome, bone broth is a relatively cheap and easy addition to your daily health routine.
Speaking of being fiscally sound, making bone broth is a great way to use up those veggie scraps and other vegetables that you didn’t get around to using.
We’re saving one of the best benefits for last: bone broth can help you look younger and increase the health of your hair, nails, and skin from the collagen extracted via the long cooking method. Collagen is found in many supplements, skin products, and expensive serums and is thought to reduce wrinkles and fine lines. It’s a natural smoothing and plumping agent.
On a side note, many of our patients with joint pain and other similar issues report positive benefits from regular bone broth. This makes sense because of the anti-inflammatory and lubricating properties of bone broth.
It’s also not unusual for people to feel a boost in energy from well-made bone broth.
Traditional Chinese Medicine Benefits of Bone Broth
From a TCM perspective some of the key benefits of bone broth include boosting a person’s qi, blood, yin, and even essence. Blood and yin are especially noteworthy here because these two aspects of a person typically get depleted with chronic conditions as well as through the normal aging process.
The importance of building qi, blood, and essence is why we recommend medicinal broth for those who are dealing with anything that is especially taxing to the body such as chemotherapy, the graveyard shift, and busy, stressful lifestyles. It’s also great for those who tend toward catching colds often.
So how much and how often?
This is one of the few things you can’t really overdo. Most people will consume a cup or two a day, and drink it hot like tea. You can also cook with it by using it as a base for extra tasty soups and stews.
The key is consistency.
The benefits of bone broth build over time. Once you find a recipe you like, then just remind yourself: each tasty cup is better for me than the last.
Making bone broth
So how do you make bone broth? It’s one of those things that’s actually so simple that we tend to over complicate it. The truth is, once you’ve made it a couple of times with different variations you’ll feel the difference and find the method that suits you. To get you started, here’s a quick Q&A:
How long does it take to make bone broth? This varies depending on method (stove top, crockpot, pressure cooker, etc) and type of bones used. Fish bones need less time than chicken, which needs less time than pork, which needs less time than red meat bones (cow, ox, bison, etc). The bigger the bones, the longer they need to cook. Some recipes that call for fish bones are finished in as little as a couple of hours, whereas beef bone broth recipes range from 16 hours to 2-3 days. The longer recipes reflect the time it takes for the bones to become brittle and fall apart to ensure full extraction of nutrients.
To roast or not to roast? Some people roast the bones before making the broth to enhance color and richness. Some don’t because they think it might take away from some of the medicinal value. It comes down to a matter of taste, really.
Adding an acid. Adding a tablespoon or two of apple-cider vinegar or lemon juice helps to extract calcium and minerals from the bones. It’s crucial to yielding a therapeutic broth.
Skimming. Some people skim regularly during the process to take off the “impurities” and fat that floats up during cooking. You can probably get away with just doing this at the end. Some people like a clearer broth and some like a more cloudy broth. If you source good quality, organic, free range, grass fed bones then skimming is a minor issue.
As far as sourcing the bones goes, butchers and farmer’s markets are popular places. Being in Napa we are fortunate to have more access to these types of places as well as small farms. There’s also the internet of course.
To get you started you can check out US Wellness Meats.
Quick tips:
For those who don’t like the taste of powdered medicinal herbs, try mixing them into your bone broth. For a stronger formula, try a “super brew” by having Bianca convert your formula to raw herbs and putting the herbs in when you make your broth!
Ginger and turmeric are great for inflammation- toss them in when you make your broth.
Easy Bone Broth Recipe
Here’s the recipe we use. It’s from our favorite family chef, Mama Spice:
Ingredients:
Bones from 2 or 3 roasted chickens* - include skin and be sure to pick off any meat left on the bones and reserve it for use in soup
2 medium onions - quartered through the root ends
2 ribs of celery cut into chunks
2 carrots, scrubbed and cut into 2 inch chunks
1 head of garlic - slice crosswise into two pieces
1 2 inch piece of fresh ginger root (optional)
7-8 pieces of thyme (about 5 - 6 inches long)
8 sprigs of fresh Italian parsley (about 6 inches long)
1 by leaf
1 teaspoon peppercorns
2 Tablespoons of cider vinegar
2 to 3 quarts of cold water or enough to just cover the bones and vegetables
*You can use rotisserie chickens if you like - the broth will be delicious!
Add all of the ingredients in the order listed to a 6 quart slow cooker.
Cook on low for 8 - 12 hours. At the end of cooking, remove the bones and vegetables and discard them. Strain the broth through a mesh strainer to remove the remaining pieces of bones, skin, and vegetables.
Note: If desired, you may place the ingredients in an oven-safe Dutch oven and place it, covered, in a 300 degree oven for four hours. After four hours, reduce the oven heat to 275 degrees and cook for another 3 hours. After 7 hours total, remove the pot from the oven.
To finish the broth, remove the fat:
Method 1 - Chill broth overnight in the refrigerator and then remove the fat layer the next day by scraping it off.
Method 2 - Pour the broth, in batches, into a fat separator and let stand for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, the fat will rise to the top and you can pour the broth into a clean container and the fat will remain in the separator. Repeat until all broth has been defatted.
Uses: This salt-free broth can be used in a variety of ways, such as in healthy soups, nourishing stews, gravies, etc. If you want to drink it like a tea, you may wish to add a pinch of salt.
Storage: Refrigerate the broth for up to 5 days. After 5 days, freeze for up to 3 months.
Note: if your slow cooker or Dutch oven is smaller than 6 quarts, you can make a smaller amount of broth by using one chicken carcass and half of the remaining ingredients.
Bone Appétit!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to the delicious and nutritious world of nourishing broth. Alongside acupuncture and medicinal herbs, healing bone broths can be an excellent addition to your health regimen. Explore our website for more tools and resources, and if you’re looking for more 1-1 support, book an appointment with one of our practitioners.
