Sonoma Press - Bone Broth: 101 Essential Recipes & Age-Old Remedies to Heal Your Body

Copyright 2016 by Quinn Farrar Wilson

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Author photo Mary OBrien

ISBN: Print 978-1-942411-92-5 | eBook 978-1-942411-93-2

For my darling grandfather Pak
and my wonderful grandmother Beep,
with special thanks to my family.
Hubba hubba.

With Love, Ulo Ulo

One spring morning in San Diego, where I live, a friend dropped over to brief me on his recent trip to a conference about one of our shared intereststraditional foods.

Youre not going to believe this, he said. Instead of coffee in the morning, they served bone broth.

A cup of bone broth first thing in the morning? It sounded strange to me at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I was intrigued.

Several years earlier, after spending a couple of years working for an organic farm, Id become involved in my communitys locally producedfoods movement. I had purged my kitchen and pantry of any and all processed food products. So, with my culinary background, I reasoned, why couldnt I make my own broth? How hard could it be?

I did my research, picked up an order of bones from a local sustainable farm, rolled up my sleeves, and reached for the preCivil War cast-iron cauldron that had belonged to my great-great-grandmother. What better way to resurrect a traditional food than by using this antique vessel Id spent months restoring?

I browned the bones, chopped my vegetables, added vinegar, allowed the mixture to sit for the time needed to draw out the minerals, fired-up my stove top, and kept my eyes practically glued to that bubbling cauldron for the next 36 hours. At the end of that time, I had two questions: Is broth supposed to be black? Is broth supposed to taste like the bottom of a barbecue pit? I didnt think so, but what did I know?

I poured the precious black liquid into mason jars and let it cool overnight. In the morning I skimmed off the fat, took a sip of my very first bone broth, and promptly tossed out the whole batch.

I love sharing the story of my failed first batch because it illustrates something you need to know about making bone broth: Failure is definitely an option, so youre going to need some perseverance, since its all about trial and error in the beginning. Thats because every kitchen is different, so the process involves many unknown variables, and problems dont always have precise solutions.

But you also need to know that making bone broth at home is easy if you have the right tools and just a little patience. When you make your own broth, youre free to please your own palate. Youll always have broth on hand when you need it, and in the long run that saves you time and money.

But back to my own trials and errors. I kept experimenting. I exchanged the romance of my great-great-grandmothers cauldron (and the hazards of a 36-hour open flame on my stove top) for a $3 slow cooker from the thrift store. I continued to learn from my mistakes. It took me a few tries, but I was finally able to make a great bone broth. And once I could actually drink my own broth, I started enjoying a hot mug of it four mornings a week. Why only four? Because that was the exact number of mason jars my little cooker yielded!

Even that amount of bone broth was enough to bring about dramatic changes in my health. Its not that I had been harboring great expectations. I wasnt sick, and I wasnt trying to treat any particular ailment. I had my issues, of course, like most people doa sensitive and erratic stomach, skin that didnt do well in the heat, and constant, excruciating bone pain from 20 years of dental implants and experimental surgeries that Id endured since the age of 10, when a skiing accident knocked my front teeth out. All the same, making bone broth was purely experimental for me.

But even though I wasnt looking for miracle cures, it took only two weeks of this modest bone broth regimen for the skin on my hands to become sleek and supple, and my complexion start to glow. After six weeks, the healing really kicked inone day my bone pain just stopped, and my bone tissue has remained strong, healthy, and dense ever since. After six months of bone broth, my stomach issues also began to improve, and after eight months they were completely resolved.