Bone broth, so simple, so healthful, so cheap, so easy. Bone broth has been backbone of traditional diets throughout the world. It is the corner stone for followers of the Weston A Price and GAPS diets.

Bone broth helps seal leaky guts, gives you strong nails and hair and improves joint health. It is incredibly nutrient rich and gives you

Collagen/gelatin-important for skin, nails and hair

Glucosamine – for joints

Chondroitin- for joints

Glycine and proline- amino-acids good for sleep and vision

Minerals lacking in most people’s diets including calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, sulfur and potassium

This fantastic stuff will also make your food more delicious, so skip those cubes or boxed stock filled with added chemicals and make your own.

First, you’ll need some bones. I primarily make our stock from beef marrow bones. The butcher cuts them into hunks for me. You can also use chicken-carcasses left over from roast chicken are ideal- lamb, venison or whatever bones you have available.

Fill the bottom of your slow cooker with a single layer of bones, frozen is fine. If you like, you can roast the bones for 45 minutes in a medium oven (175 C/350F) before you put them in. I’ve tried it both ways and didn’t taste a noticeable difference myself, but some people swear by roasting. I do roast the bones sometimes if I want to snarfle the marrow out. Delish!

Pour enough water in to cover the bones by an inch or so. Add a good splash of vinegar, at least 2 TBS worth. I use homemade apple cider vinegar. The vinegar is a vital ingredient as it helps free the minerals from the bone.

Cook covered on high until the water bubbles, then turn back down to low. When you’ve been cooking for 20 hours or so, add vegetable cooking scraps or cut up veggies. Ours usually has onion ends and skins, garlic peel, carrot skins and I try to add a stick of celery. I also add sea vegetables like kombu to infuse the stock with iodine. Cook for another 2-4 hours or longer if you like. This is not a time-precise process. If you want a nice dark stock, cook for a bit longer or add the veggies in earlier.

When you’ve cooked the stock for 24 hours or so, pour it into a bowl through a colander. Strain the resulting liquid through a metal sieve. Salt to taste. Place the liquid in the fridge for a few hours if you wish to remove the layer of fat that will float to the top or use immediately. When the liquid it cooled, it should be set with the gelatin from the bones like a nutritious meaty Jello and should be thick enough to slice.

Pick out the bones and place them back in the pot. Repeat the process and get another batch or two of broth out of these same bones. You’ll soon know by looking when your bones are done and won’t give you a rich gelatin. If I poke the bones with a fork and the fork tines go in, I consider the bones finished. Second and third batches of broth won’t have as much gelatin and may not be sliceable.

What about the veggie scraps, meat and fat in the colander? You can eat the meat and the fat if you like. My bones are not meaty, so I don’t generally bother. Most of the time, the chickens get to have the contents of the colander, especially this time of year when they require extra protein to grow feathers in their molting season.

What do you do with the broth when you have it? You can make incredible rich soups, stews and risottos. I also like to drink a mug of it in the mornings for a good dose of minerals and iodine. Frugal Man often has it instead of tea as his first morning drink.

There are a lot of processes out there that make broth well. This is just one of them. Some people make it on the stove top, some people have “perpetual bone broth” that they keep going all the time. Some people make their broth in pressure cookers. Personally, I’d steer away from that one as it is likely to destroy some of the nutrients you are wanting to get from broth.

Do you make bone broth? How do you make yours?