Making Bone Broth

It's been a while since I posted any food reviews here. Reason being I am on homemade food diet. 😃 This diet is overdue. Because my hives is chronic and though at one point I was going gluten free but I also strayed away and then got other issues (read: mild eczema), etc. Well, I'm not going into details about it. 

But since I suspect my hives is related to gut. One of the things that I found out is bone broth is very nutritious and helpful in healing leaky gut (increased intestinal permeability). One could go out and buy bone broth. I remember that years ago I was able to buy very good quality organic chicken broth from Costco in San Jose, California. Price was decent as well. But here it could get expensive if I buy my bone broth for every day consumption. Making it isn't too complicated but it takes time if you do it on stove top or slow cooker. Bone broth has to be cooked on slow fire for at least 6 hours for it to be able to extract all the nutrients and minerals from the bones.

I read another blog about making bone broth that pretty much any vegetables could be used for making bone broth. The following combination here is based on a recipe from Karen Fischer - The Eczema Diet.

Ingredients :

Chicken bones (preferably organic) - about 8 pieces of chicken breast bones

3 stalk of green onions - tied into a knot

2 garlic

2 brussel sprout

1 stalk of leek

1 tbs apple cider vinegar - to draw the mineral out

1 6qt pot

3 qt of water

Instructions :

Rinse the chicken bones. This step can be skipped if you don't believe in washing your chicken.

Put the chicken bones in a oven save ceramic ware (like Corningware). I just stack them up since my ceramic ware isn't big enough for all the bones to stay on one layer. Bake them in the oven set at 375℉ for about 1 hr and 15 minutes. Or until they're all dry and golden color. 

The baking step can also be skipped if you want to save time. But I find that baking the chicken bones gives the soup more flavor. 

Meanwhile fill half of the pot with water. Rinse of all the vegetables and place them in the pot. Place each piece of chicken bones in the pot careful not to include the fat that is sitting in the ceramic ware.

Place the pot on the stove under low setting. I like to set a timer for 1 hour and then repeat the timer again every hour until it reaches 6 hour.

Use a spatula and break apart the bones to get more mineral out. I usually just let the whole pot cool off enough so it can go in the refrigerator. Next day the fat that has congealed will be easier to be removed. You could also strain the broth first into another pot and just keep the broth without the bones. But I don't have another big pot for that. So I just keep the bones in and finish my batch and then discard the bones.

The following day after the fat has been removed. I prepared two empty clean jars and poured some broth in it. Those two jars will go to freezer. Just in case if I don't finish my broth fast enough. I don't want it to go wasted after all the effort put in to make it.

This amount of broth can last about 5 days.