I’m a huge fan of bone broth. It is one of my favorite superfoods with benefits that range from fighting the flu to building up healthy bones, teeth, and skin. When you make bone broth yourself, it is also one of the cheapest superfoods you can consume, costing literally just pennies to make.
Why Make Bone Broth?
The reason that bone broth is so healthy isn’t just because it contains lots of nutrients. It is healthy because it contains nutrients that we usually don’t get in our everyday diet.
Our ancestors used all parts of the animals that they ate — including the bones which they’d cook down to make broth out of. Today, we mostly just eat the muscle meats of animals. These are rich in amino acids like methionine. However, the muscle meats are lacking in other amino acids glycine. This causes an imbalance in our amino acid profile, leading to inflammation and disease.
Another reason why bone broth is so good for you is because the nutrients are easy to digest. As an added bonus, boiling down bones causes collagen to be released from them. Thus, bone broth is a great source of collagen.
Collagen, also known as gelatin, is great for your skin, hair, teeth, bones, connective tissues, and digestive system. Gelatin is even great for fighting wrinkles!
Gelatin is also remedy for leaky gut syndrome. If you aren’t familiar with this, read What Is Leaky Gut Syndrome.
How to Make Bone Broth
What you will need:
- Leftover bones from a chicken dinner, heads and feet are especially rich in gelatin! (where to buy chicken feet)
- Filtered water (where to buy a water filter)
- Crock pot, pressure cooker, or just a plain old pot on the stove. (where to buy a great crockpot)
- 1 Tbsp Organic unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar (where to buy quality ACV)
Directions:
- Our crock pot takes a while to warm up, so we put it on high and add already boiling water. This cuts down on the warm up time.
- Add your bones and let cook! Add 1 Tbsp vinegar (optional but recommended). The vinegar helps extract the minerals from the bones, but it also makes the broth slightly less palatable. It might take some getting used to, perhaps using just a tiny amount the first few times you do this. We find that if it is used to make soup no one notices, so it’s easy to sneak in but when chugging a mug of bone broth the flavor is noticeable.
- Keep adding water if it boils down too far. We usually leave it at least 48 hours.
- Once you’re ready to harvest your broth pour it through a strainer into a pot and allow it to cool.
- Use it, or freeze it for later!
- If you want to put the bones in for another round, by all means do it again. Sometimes we get 3 or 4 crockpots worth of broth from one set of bones!
- When it cools it may have a thick layer of fat at the top. You can certainly eat it but sometimes I find it tough to digest so I skim it off and cook with it instead.
- If your broth looks like jello after its cooled, you are a rockstar.
How to Consume Bone Broth
The obvious solution is to use bone broth in soups. But don’t stop there! If you really want the health benefits of bone broth, you’ll need to consume it regularly. The more bone broth you consume the better.
I drink bone broth straight-up, typically a mug a day in the cold months. You can also use it instead of water in sauces, smoothies, popsicles, veggies, and more.
Is There Are Ready-Made Bone Broth I Can Use Instead?
Making bone broth yourself is really easy. But I get it if you don’t have time. There are a few brands which make real bone broth. The only one that I really like (in terms of quality) is this bone broth by Kettle and Fire.
Why this one? Because it is made with grass-fed cows, so the cattle were healthier and thus more nutritious. If you are going to drink bone broth, you might as well do it right! You can buy it here and have it shipped to your address.
What if I Don’t Like the Taste of Bone Broth?
I’ll admit that it can take some time to get used to the taste of bone broth. Not everyone will want to drink mugs of it like I do.
Instead of making bone broth, you could consume gelatin instead. Gelatin doesn’t have all of the minerals that bone broth does, but it is pure collagen — which is the part of bone broth which really provides you with benefits like fighting wrinkles, improving joints, and strengthening bones.
No, the chemically-made jello packets you find in the store will not provide you with health benefits! You need to consume real gelatin.
My favorite brand is Great Lakes gelatin. Their Kosher gelatin is made from bones of 100% grass-fed cows and is a very high quality. You can buy it here.
Want to learn more about the health benefits of gelatin, and get lots of recipes too? Read The Gelatin Secret. You can buy it here.
Latest posts by Sylvie McCracken (see all)
- Treating H. Pylori (Part 3): What H. Pylori Does to the Body - August 8, 2022
- Treating H. Pylori (Part 2): How H. Pylori is Contracted - August 3, 2022
- Understanding Beef Labels: Organic, Pastured, Grass-Fed & Grain-Finished - July 25, 2022
bone broth, peptides, : I understand that peptides are better for you having a difficult time finding grass fed.
Great tips on preparation. Our son, who is 13 is to have surgery in 3 months. His curve is 60 now. He eats like crap. He does take a supplement and now we are focusing on him eating better. The bone broth and omega as well as the pro biotic is great. Not crazy about Iron pills this far out. Really informative information. Thank you for sharing
I have a mild case of hydrogen SIBO (even mild it is the bane of my existence), and I’m confused over whether collagen is allowed on the SIBO diet. In your book you recommend against using connective tissue to make bone broth, but here it appears you highly recommend it. Is collagen to be avoided only until the bacteria is under control? A clarification on this issue would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Lori,
This blog post was not written specifically for SIBO patients. In general, broth is an incredible superfood and people not suffering from SIBO I recommend it greatly.
For people with SIBO however the answer as always is “it depends”. What I’ve found after hearing from hundreds of SIBO sufferers is that most tolerate it well towards the end of their SIBO journey and/or after eliminating SIBO. And if tolerated it can be a great gut healer.
The modification in the ebook (less connective tissue) is what I would recommend starting with if and when you’re ready to give it a try. As with everything, you have to see how it works for *you* individually.
Hope that helps and best of luck on your healing journey!
Sylvie
Thank you so much for the quick reply!
Anytime 🙂
I bought the actual crock pot you recommend in this recipe. Do you leave it on high the entire 48 hours? Or do you use the probe and set it to a certain temp?
For your info the Great Lakes brand of gelatin is not made from bones. It is made from the skins.
I have been researching that brand.
Ive heard in terms of gut healing the stock or broth simmered for 4 hours is much more healing than those simmered for more than that ( roughly 10 or 24+ hours) . Whats your thought on this ?
Just found this site…great but how much water and can ‘uncooked’ bones opposed to cooked chicken bones be used?
I just put a chicken in the crockpot to make some bone broth. Then I stumbled upon your recipe and saw that you use filtered water. I did not use filtered water. Is it going to make a huge difference and should I start over?
It won’t make a huge difference. Since you’re going to be consuming this water, I just make sure people use water that they drink. If your tap water is what you drink then I’m sure that will be fine. 🙂
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for… thank you so much!!!! I know my family of 9 (7kids between 4-12yrs) needs bone broth in our lives but I’ve been so confused. And, honestly, grossed out by the bones. I’m ready to get over it! But 1 question- How do you know when you’ve used up the goodness in bones? I’d like to order the feet you recommended, but it’s out of stock. I’ll keep looking, but I’m just wondering how many feet you add at a time? They seem kinda pricey… but if they cn be reused that is awesome!! (Sorry I guess that was 2 questions)
Thank you again!!!
Mine did not look like Jello after it cooled :(. Is it still healthy? (I simmered for 10 hrs.)
Yes! Do you have my ebook, The Gelatin Secret? If so, turn to the troubleshooting section after the broth directions. If not, not to worry, please don’t toss it out! It’s got plenty of good stuff anyway 🙂
I have made chicken bone broth in my crockpot so many times. I always use 2 carcasses, and it never gels! I put the carcasses in, and some veggie scraps, and a healthy pour of ACV. Then I cook it on low for about 24hrs. What am I doing wrong?!
Hi Kim! Even if it doesn’t gel it is still super nutrient dense! If you’d like it to gel I would throw in some chicken heads and/or feet. Basically any bone that has tons of little bones, joints etc. Let me know how that goes!
I believe the apple cider vinegar would be dissolving the gelatin – since ACV adds acidity to your solution, the broth. Just leave ACV out when cooking.
How come you don’t add onions, carrots, garlic, whatever? Because its “bone broth” and not “stock”? Just wondering… I would assume it would make it tastier and give it some more healthy properties, no? Thanks!!
Katie, you can certainly add all of the above. As much or as little as you’d like 🙂