Simple Beef Bone Broth
Gut healing goodness...
What does almost every traditional cuisine have in common? Bone broth. The method of boiling bones, tougher cuts of meat and carcasses is something that has been practised for thousands of years and for good reason. There are numerous health benefits associated with it from healing your gut to helping your joints. Rather than list the benefits here, I'll simply supply some additional reading:
- Dr Axe's article providing easy to digest information with scientific references
- Weston A Price's article providing further recipes for chicken, beef and fish stocks
- Another Weston A Price article diving deeper into the nutrition of bone broth
My personal experience with bone broth was using it to help dramatically reduce my cystic acne. I used to drink a cup of bone broth religiously every day and it made a dramatic difference to my skin. For more information, watch episode 11 of my Day of Eating video series.
Servings: 8-10
Prep Time: 45 Minutes
Cook Time: 16-20 hours
Bulk Ingredients:
1-1.5kg grassfed beef bones
100ml apple cider vinegar
2.5L Filtered water
Spices:
Large pinch of salt
1 tsp black peppercorns
Method:
Preheat the oven to 150˚C Fan / 325˚F / Gas Mark 3. Place the bones on a large roasting tray and roast for 45 minutes. Roasting provides additional flavour to the broth.
Remove the bones from the oven and place them into a large slow cooker or crock pot.
Add 100ml of apple cider vinegar to aim in the breakdown and extraction of nutrients from the bones.
Add a large sprinkle of sea salt and the black peppercorns before covering the bones with 2-2.5L of freshly boiled water.
Once the bones are covered, cook on low for 16-20 hours, I personally shoot for 18. To add additional flavour to the stock such as fresh vegetables like carrot and onion, wait until the final 4 hours of cooking before adding. Fresh herbs should be added in the final 1-2 hours.
Once the bones have been simmering for sufficient time, strain the broth and store a glass container. The same bones can be cooked for an additional batch by simply topping up the bones with water, apple cider vinegar, salt and peppercorns however it will be significantly weaker than the first batch.
Storage:
Bone broth will keep in a sealed container for 5-6 days in the refrigerator and up to 6 months in the freezer.