Souper Tuesday: Bone Broth, the elixir of our time

6 Aug 2024

Bone broth is claimed to have many restorative functions, but commercial versions are unlikely to have all the nutrients that the human body can benefit from. The solution? Make your own.

Broth. Brodo. Stock. Bouillon. Consommé. They are all, to a point, the same thing, though the lauded French soup known as consommé differs in that it is refined with egg whites before serving.

Restorative. Restoratif. Did you know that the word “restaurant” has its roots in those words back there? A place where you go to consume things that will restore the body, beef you up. Literally, when we’re talking about bone broth, or stock. Foods that contain things like collagen and calcium. Elixirs.

While stocks/broths (the latter is generally the American choice of word for the British stock) are used as a base for other dishes, consommé is a soup in its own right, and stands on a very high plinth in the pantheon of French cuisine. Brodo, in Italy, is made of several kinds of meat with the requisite onion, celery, carrot and salt (which are common to all of the aforementioned broths) and is often served with pasta such as tortellini.

Bone broth, an essential stock made of bones boiled for many hours with aromatics, is punted as an elixir that will heal you in many ways, and lead to weight loss. The minerals in your resulting broth after many hours of cooking will include potassium, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, all of benefit to human metabolism, experts say.

Bouillon is the French version of a basic stock, used for sauces and soups and so on, with variations such as court-bouillon, famously used for poaching fish.

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But experts caution that not all bone broths sold commercially contain enough of the elements that will achieve the claimed results, and certainly many, or most, of them seem not to have been cooked for long enough. The reason, I would hazard, is that the longer the broth is cooked, the more expensive it is to produce. The prevalent mindset of producers of commercial foods is to find ways to cut costs, so that’s where my money is.

To be sure that the bone broth you desire contains as many of the healing elements that those who buy the product are seeking, the best solution is to make it yourself. Speaking specifically of beef bone broth, which is the one I am talking about here, there are key steps that need to be paid attention to:

The bones should be roasted first, but only for half an hour. The longer you roast them, the more the elements you need in the broth become spoiled. Half an hour is enough time to “wake it up”, so to speak, without destroying the minerals and vitamins that are sensitive to heat and lose a great deal of their nutritional value.

Once the roasting has been done, the bones must be added to a simple stock of water, onion, carrot, celery, with a few herbs, and brought to a gentle simmer.

This simmering process, for beef, should last for at the very least 24 hours, but the more you cook it (at this gentle heat), the more of the “goodness” in the bones will infuse the broth (to use a term beloved of my parents’ generation). Boiling extracts collagen, minerals and gelatin from the bones, which means that the resulting stock is rich in essential amino acids.

Therefore, if you can go for 24 hours, why wouldn’t you keep it going for a second day?

The very best piece of kitchen equipment for this is the slow cooker, because it has variable settings, all of them gentle, and its lid prevents evaporation to an astonishing degree. I know this because in a full 48 hours of cooking at the weekend, I had to do minimal topping up.

Strange, for me, to promote the slow cooker. It’s an implement that I always ignore and often disparage. But for this kind of a broth, a slow cooker is absolutely what you need.

What are the claimed benefits of bone broth?

Fights inflammation;

Aids digestion;

Weight loss;

Improves health of joints;

Better nerve function;

Supports the immune system;

Improves sleep;

But, while beef stock is gluten free and suitable for a paleo diet, it is for obvious reasons out of bounds to a vegetarian or vegan.

Note that the above are all claimed, though some expert commentators warn that the clamour about the supposed health benefits is out of proportion to the actual benefits. But, benefits there are (even those cautious experts say so) and if you make your own, to the recipe below, there will be about as much benefit as you could hope for.

Apart from anything else, it’s a real feel-good broth, and just the act of eating it will boost your mood. As the Wall Street Journal wrote, under the headline Broth: The New Liquid Lunch, it is “quite possibly the only dish that counts as both a comfort food and a health aid”.

It makes sense to make it over the weekend, which could easily become a routine, to make a batch for the week ahead. This will fill a standard slow cooker to the brim. So, get that slow cooker out, and let’s go…

Bone broth

1 kg beef bones

4 large carrots, roughly chopped

3 onions, roughly chopped

2 celery stalks, diced

2 or 3 leeks, diced

4 bruised garlic cloves, peeled

4 bay leaves

4 thyme sprigs

Salt

Black pepper (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Place the bones on an oven tray.

Roast the bones for 30 minutes at 200°C.

Put the contents into the slow cooker and turn it on.

Put a large stock pot on the stove.

Add all the vegetables and herbs, and season.

Cover with water.

Bring to a boil and then boil rapidly for 5 minutes.

Transfer the contents to a slow cooker, put the lid on, switch it on and bring it to a simmer (if the slow cooker is not yet full, top up to the brim with boiling water).

Cook for 48 hours, topping up with boiling water when necessary. Don’t top it up for the final 8 hours.

When it is done, turn off the heat and leave it to cool completely. The process will be complete only when, having cooled down, the fats will rise to the surface and collect on top, turning white.

Scoop off all of the congealed fat and discard.

Strain into a large container, through a fine sieve. Discard the vegetables.

Refrigerate, or divide into portions in plastic containers and freeze for later. Bring just to a boil (without actually billing) before serving. Crusty bread will do the trick. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

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