Bone Broth
Herbal Tea for Killers
In this transmission we talk about bone broth, the why and the how. It is easy to make and delicious. As always with the Steader, we start with the assumption that you want regenerative personal health embedded in a healthy, regenerative family and community.
Bone broth has some claim to be a miracle food. It is deep nutrition and deep flavor both.
2 gallons of bone broth freshly canned
(Don’t go crazy. If you don’t follow the advice in this transmission to the foot of the letter, you should feel bad but not too bad.)
WHY
Briefly let’s hit why you should use it and make it yourself if possible. If you are in a rush, skip to the section on indicator nutrients.
Personal health. You are a founder. Of a family, of a brotherhood, of a network of loyalty and friendship and patronage. You are making something worthwhile where everything depends on you. Not only does sickness limit you directly, so much of your drive, worldview, charisma, vision, and mental strength come from good nutrition in a healthy body.
Group health. Likewise. Healthy people are happy, attractive, well-adjusted, competent, and hunger for vision. That makes everything about your work as the founder easier.
Indicator nutrients. Reject the idea that scientists have a complete picture of the micronutrients your body needs. They don’t. That means that any vitamins or nutrients you know you are lacking probably means you are lacking others that no one knows about.
In biology they have a concept called the indicator species, a species that may or may not be necessary to the flourishing of the ecosystem but which is very sensitive to ecosystem disruption. When the species ails, the wise know that something is probably wrong with the ecosystem as a whole. An indicator species problem isn’t one that can be fixed by dumping breeding pairs of the species into the environment, any more than miners can fix gas build ups by giving oxygen to the canary. Likewise, the nutrients and vitamins we have discovered are indicator nutrients that you probably are also lacking the ones we don’t know about. By all means take supplements, but also take a broad spectrum nutrient dense natural food. Such as bone broth.
Savor. Eating meals together is prime social technology for family, friends, neighborhood, brotherhood, or any other institution you are trying to form and strengthen. The meals need to taste good.
Primary Production. Making the broth yourself gives you better control over what is in it, so its healthier. It’s much cheaper than purchased bone broth + supplements. Most importantly making the broth yourself is a form of primary production. Primary production in some form is absolutely necessary.
HOW
Bone broth is about the easiest thing to make you can conceive of. Can you boil water? You can make bone broth.
Getting bones. You can make bone broth as simply as boiling bones from a couple of t-bones after you’ve dined. Do not use pork or chicken bones from agribusiness pork or chicken.
But if you want larger quantities, you need to contact a butcher or a custom slaughterhouse. If you let them know you want them for human consumption they are less likely to give you bones off the floor (most of their requests are from pet owners). On the other hand, they are less likely to give you bones at all. We are usually ok with the bones if they pass the sniff test, but you may actually care about hygiene so ymmv.
The bones will likely be covered with odd scraps of meat and cartilage. Don’t bother removing them.
Making the broth. Put the bones in a pot, cover with water, heat up, keep on a low boil.
If you have large, long bones you either need a large pot or a good bone saw. Or you can do it redneck style like we have in the past and make your first batch of broth from one half of the bones, flipping them for the second batch. A roasting pan is often a good solution for these bones.
You can add spices or onion or whatnot if you want. We usually don’t.
The longer you let is simmer, the richer the broth will be. We usually do at least a day, sometimes two days.
If the bones are packed in pretty well, they are usually good for at two batches.
Pouring off the broth. You will usually want to pour off the broth before it cools though you don’t have to. You may also want to use some kind of sieve, cheese cloth, or filter, though you don’t have to. At this point you need to decide if you want to keep the fat in the broth or not. If you do, let the broth cool and then skim the fat for cooking. If not, move directly to storing the broth.
The broth cooled in pitchers which is why the fat is square shaped. We poured the skimmed broth back into a pot afterwards for no good reason, just one of those reflex actions.
Bowl of cooking fat. The fried chicken was incredible.
Storing. Broth will last for a few days sitting out (ymmv) and longer in the fridge but will still go bad eventually. The better you have skimmed the fat, the longer it will keep in this way. The more you have filtered, the longer it will keep.
Otherwise, for a big batch you can it or freeze it. We pressure canned the batch in these pictures but we didn’t have to. Low key water bath canning gives you at least a couple of months in our experience. If you don’t cool the broth, you can also just boil the jars and then pour the hot broth in directly. This also gives you several weeks at room temperature and longer in the fridge. Be aware that all the experts say you should pressure can or freeze If you want it to last more than a week, so you can believe them or us random knuckleheads on the internet who probably have iron stomachs and just got lucky, your choice.
Using the broth. If you drink it straight, reheat and add salt. Otherwise, stews, soups, or recipes that call for bouillon.
What about the bones and assorted boiled guck? You will have some gelatinous boiled meat and cartilage guck when you are done. It is good for you, full of digestible connective tissue, and absolutely flavorless. If you don’t eat it yourself, pets and poultry will.
Boiled guck. We ate about half.
The bones are a topic for another day.
