Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably seen a post or two about bone broth. Amidst it’s incredible health benefits, I’d be lying if I said I was a bit worried to try this. Afterall, a recovering vegetarian finds it hard enough to eat meat or poultry at the thought of where it came from, but boiling their bones to get the nutrients out!? It just sounded barbaric. But…. even so, because I’ve been trying to find holistic ways to heal my gut and (hopefully) my autoimmune diseases, I decided to push the “where it came from” thoughts out of my mind and give it a whirl.
There are a ton of great recipes swirling around out there, I took a few of these and smushed them together! Here’s what I used, the picture above is actually my second batch!
Because I don’t have 48 hours to sit in front of my stove, I threw everything into a crockpot. I put the crockpot on high until it was boiling, then I turned it to low and let it go! They say you should cook beef bone broth for 48 hours, and that’s what I did:
- Beef bones with marrow (about 3-4 pounds)
- filtered water to cover bones
- 4 tbsp apple cider vinegar (I love Braggs!)
- 1 TBSP Himalayan sea salt
- 1 TBSP black peppercorns
- 2 organic onions, peeled and quartered
- 1 head of organic garlic, cloves peeled and cut in half
- 4 organic carrots, ends cut off and cut in half
- 4 stalks of organic celery, ends cut off and chopped (I think I may leave the leaves on next time!)
- Any other veggies you have on hand that you’d like to get the nutrients out of!
You can find many different variations of bone broth (you can use any kind of animal bones also), this is just what I personally did and what I’ve been drinking each day. I’ve been aiming for about 1 cup (8oz) of bone broth per day in the morning. Bone broth only keeps in the fridge for a few days, so when it cooled from the crockpot I put it into large mason jars to freeze what I wasn’t going to be able to drink within the next few days. When you defrost the bone broth, you’ll need to scrape the fat off the top – I’ve heard a lot of people reserve this fat for cooking with high flames as animal fat has a higher smoking point and won’t turn into free radicals. I haven’t gone there yet….
I can’t wait to see how things play out for me over the next weeks and months!
Enjoy!
xoxo
