Bones and Broth

My brother's fiancee dumps them in a crockpot with bottled barbecue sauce (of different flavors) and just lets them stew. It is delicious. Very tender and easy!

As for bones... place on pan and broil for appr. 10 minutes or until brown. Cool and add to cold water. Slowly bring to boil and skim off sludge.. (smile). Lower to simmer and leave on 24-48 hours. By adding at least 1 Tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice in the beginning you will bring out the calcium in the bones. So the broth will be a good source of calcium. I mix is with tomato juice, tobasco sauce, sea salt, lemon and Worchester for a pre-dinner drink (no alcohol). The stomach reacts to fat by producing bile which is needed to properly digest protein so it is excellent as "nutrition" to drink before dinner. You may or may not want to reduce the broth. As I do not want to drink much I like to reduce it and only need to add appr. 2 Tablespoons to make a drink. *IMPORTANT* This recipe is for grass-fed animals. I am right now boiling store-bought beef bones of grain fed animals. The broth is different. I'm not sure how much broth I am getting. It seems to be all fat. I do know I added 2 carrots and several stalks of celery and the taste is much better than the first batch. I also added just a little sea salt this time as I do not plan on using the broth as a soup base. Be careful with the salt. I recommend adding it only at the end. Let the bones and soup cool some, and then STRAIN. I recommend using a strainer AND also cheesecloth on the last strain or you will have some grit. There are little to no nutrients in this. The value is in the calcium and gelatin. Once you put the liquid into different containers and in the refrigerator it will separate. I scooped out and discarded the fat from my first batch (the grass-fed beef) but am now attempting Pemmican since I saw the recipe here!! Whether the fat from grain fed beef will be acceptable I do not know. Certainly the taste is quite different. I doubt I will use it. I already dried grass-fed buffalo meat. My understanding is that the fat, or suet, is better used from around the kidney. To harvest that you would probably need to buy the beef on the hoof. I got it with my beef last year but did not know what to do with it unfortunately and ended up not using it. I understand that the minerals and vitamins of the animals are stored in the fat around the kidneys. And it is a LOT of fat ! From one cow I got fat the size of a very large watermelon! This is the best source of fat for Pemmican. The reason it may be "tasteless" to the modern palate is because of the poor food source. The fat of grass-fed animals is delicious.

After the value of the calcium, and the fat if you use it, is the the gelatin. The broth will cool and form into a gelatin. This gelatin facilitates the assimilation and transportation of vitamins and nutrients in our bodies. Absorption is a vital part of vitamin reception. We can eat huge amounts and not get nutrients.

The same is true for chickens. I simmered the bones, and bought extra bags of feet, for at least 48 hours. The bones are quite soft afterwards. I've read that the natives dried the bones and ate them as we might "chips" when food was more scarce. The feet also provides important and additional gelatin.

Although you did not ask about fish broth I will tell you my experience. Just for fun I made it. Be careful to use non-fatty fish. Put in all the whole fish. Vitamin A is in the eyes and is the only source for some natives. I never wondered why people had "fish head soup", just accepting it as a native dish, but all the native dishes of (healthy) cultures are important for a reason. Please note that fish broth is not for drinking. As a matter of fact it tastes terrible. I finally used it in a recipe for homemade clam chowder out of the cookbook Nourishing Traditions. On faith. And wow. It was incredible.

My cooking experience is very limited but these are the results of my experiments.

By Anne. Posted to the PaleoRecipe Mailing List, Sept. 2001