Want to know how to make gelatinous, perfect bone broth in your pressure cooker every time? So did I! So, I turned to Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo. It was her post on making homemade bone broth in her pressure cooker that cemented my desire to solve the riddle of whether or not pressure cooking is healthy once and for all! Michelle has generously offered to divulge her broth-making secrets with you. She shares how to make her Pressure Cooker Bone Broth below. Thanks, Michelle!

There’s nothing I like more than a nice steaming mug of bone broth to get me through the cold winter months. It warms me from the inside out and it’s so good for you: check out why in these great posts by Mark’s Daily Apple and Balanced Bites.

I have a recipe for simmering bone broth in the slow cooker and my mom routinely makes a pot on the stove but sometimes I just want a bowl RIGHT NOW. If you haven’t guessed, patience ain’t one of my strong suits.

Enter the pressure cooker.

According to foodie scientist, Harold McGee:

A pressure cooker is a special pot that seals tightly and traps hot steam to build the pressure and temperature.

In other words, stocks and stews that normally take hours to cook are finished in just 1/3 the time in a pressure cooker. I don’t use my pressure cooker for everything but I do love stewing braised veggies and meaty bone broths in it. Why? Because these dishes just turn out better and faster. It’s quite remarkable how pressure cooking can transform meaty, collagen-filled cuts like oxtail and cross shanks into fork tender cuts in less than an hour.

(Although the new generation of pressure cookers are safer than the old ones, please read your instruction manual carefully and check out these helpful tips from Mr. McGee. You do need to babysit the pot and you can’t wing it.)

I’ve got great pressure cooker recipes for Welsh Beef Stew and Phở that I share in my iPad cooking app, but here’s a simple recipe for a flavorful bone broth that’ll be ready in less than an hour. And, yes, it does gel in the fridge. Just throw in a few chicken feet or joint bones and your broth will be all jiggly.

Pressure Cooker Bone Broth Recipe

(This recipe is cross-posted at Nom Nom Paleo.)

Equipment

Pressure Cooker (where to buy pressure cookers)

The Players

2 medium leeks, cleaned and cut in half crosswise

1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into three pieces

2.5 pounds of assorted bones (I use a mixture of chicken and pork bones from the freezer or cross shanks and oxtails)

8 cups of water (enough to cover the bones but not more than 2/3rd the capacity of the pressure cooker)

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons of Red Boat fish sauce (where to buy Red Boat fish sauce)

The How-To

Dump the veggies in the pressure cooker (make sure it’s at least 6-quarts).

Toss in your bones (frozen is fine), cover with water (make sure you don’t fill more than 2/3rds capacity!), add vinegar, and fish sauce.

Lock on the lid and turn the dial to high pressure. Place the pot on a burner set on high heat. Once the indicator pops up showing that the contents of the pot have reached high pressure, immediately decrease the temperature to the lowest possible setting to maintain high pressure (low is normally adequate).

Set the timer for 30 minutes (I let it go for 50 minutes if I’m cooking meaty shanks or oxtails).

When the timer dings, turn off the burner and remove the pot from the heat. Let the pressure release naturally (10-15 minutes).

Remove the lid, skim of the scum (if you desire), and strain the broth.

I don’t parboil the bones to decrease the scum because I’m lazy. Plus, there really isn’t that much left after you strain it.

This technique is faster and more flavorful than other methods. Really.

For more delicious recipes similar to this one (grain-free and dairy-free), I highly recommend the Paleo Eats Cookbook.

Written by a Cordon Bleu trained chef, this book is packed with hundreds of recipes to get you started on your journey to ancestral eating. Recipes are grain-free, dairy-free, soy-free, sugar-free, and use healthy fats. They’re also super easy to follow and can be prepared in 30 minutes or less!

At the moment, the printed version of this cookbook is 100% free to Food Renegade readers. You just cover shipping & handling.

Yes! I want a free cookbook.

Meet Michelle Tam!

I am super-excited to have Michelle guest post here at Food Renegade!

Michelle is the sardonic foodie and working mom behind Nom Nom Paleo, a popular and award-winning food blog devoted to Paleo food porn and recipes galore.

Covering everything from kitchen shortcuts to tips on dining out, the site demonstrates with vivid food photography that Paleo eating is possible for anyone — even those with busy schedules and demanding palates. Michelle is passionate about helping readers implement and sustain an ancestral dietary approach; on a daily basis, she writes about how home cooks can spend less time in the kitchen and still end up with nutritious, flavor-packed meals for the entire family.

Michelle has a degree in Nutrition & Food Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of California at San Francisco. Although Michelle’s training emphasized conventional approaches to nutrition and health, she discovered the science and benefits of Paleo eating two years ago, finding that it was the only approach that helped to whittle down her midsection and fuel her with enough energy to wrangle two small boys, hold down a full-time night shift hospital job, cook for a houseful of hungry cavepeople, lift heavy stuff at her CrossFit box, and maintain a daily blog.

In the Spring of 2012, Michelle released the Nom Nom Paleo interactive cookbook for the iPad®, a visual feast packed with brand new recipes, as well as updated versions of classic Nom Nom Paleo dishes. Within the first 24 hours of its release in April 2012, it was featured as one of the top three paid Lifestyle apps in the App Store. It continues to be one of the Top 10 bestselling paid Food & Drink apps in the App Store.

Michelle’s blog was recently recognized by the editors and readers of Saveur Magazine as the Best Special Diets Blog of 2012. She also won Apartment Therapy and thekitchn.com’s 2012 Homies Award for Best Food Photography on a Blog.

So, if you haven’t checked out Nom Nom Paleo yet, what are you waiting for? Go do it now!

What if you don’t have bones on hand or a pressure cooker?

What if you still want all the benefits of homemade bone broth, but you don’t have a time-saving pressure cooker or a pile of bones on hand?

Good news! You can now buy real bone broth online. It’s traditionally-prepared from pastured animals and ships frozen.

(where to buy real bone broth online)

If buying any pre-made broth isn’t up your alley, then I highly suggest you invest in a pressure cooker! This is the one I got.

NO EXCUSES, FOLKS. Get ‘er done!

(where to buy pressure cookers)

(photos by Nom Nom Paleo)