Bone Broth Soup

Bone broth soup is extremely good for us. I discovered over thirty years ago that if my husband, Bob, and I have two servings of my home made bone broth soup a week, we have no problems with our joints. If I forget, my knees really bother me. So we religiously eat and drink our soup.

An added benefit is the health of our bones. Last September, Bob sleep-walked off of our loft. He was 68 years old at the time and he fell an entire story. Yet, he broke nothing. Not one bone. He was, of course, bruised but he healed quickly.

So what do I put into my bone broth soup? Lots of things. I start with free-range, organic, grass-fed beef, chicken, turkey or lamb bones. Beef bones I sometimes roast in the oven for an hour or two first, but the rest can go right into the crock pot. I also always add (no matter what kind of soup I’m making) several chicken feet. The highest amount of gelatin in a chicken resides in the feet so they are included right away.

Then I put in one or two onions, several beets, a bunch of carrots, any greens that I can find (Swiss chard, beet greens, kale or carrot tops) and a good chunk of organic liver.

Adding a few tablespoons of vinegar or white wine helps get the goodies out of the bones.

Filling the pot with pure water (no chlorine or fluoride), it’s ready to go.

Bring it to a boil then let it simmer. You don’t want a fully rolling boil, just a gentle one. This can also be started on a stove top and moved into the oven (at 200 degrees). You want to cook it for a long time. Forty-eight hours is ideal. Remember, vitamins and minerals are water-soluble. That means that they come out of all of these ingredients and go into the soup.

When it’s done, everything gets poured through a colander and set out to cool. Once it has cooled, ladle it through a strainer and into can or freeze pints (not regular canning jars). These go directly into the freezer for future use.

Sometimes, I just heat up the broth, pour it into two cups and we drink it. Other times, I will fry some onions and sweet peppers in coconut oil then pour in the broth to which is added other cut-up veggies (carrots, beets, broccoli, beans, more greens or corn). This makes a delicious soup. Or, it goes into a stir-fry. Again, I fry some onions, sweet peppers and mushrooms in coconut oil while the other veggies are cooking in the broth (about 1 ½ hours for the beets, 1 hour for the carrots and 5 or 10 minutes for the others). At the end, I toss them all together in one pot and thicken the sauce with arrowroot (mix about 3 tablespoons of the powder with cold water and add until the whole mixture boils). Yum!

The many benefits of bone broth soup are detailed nicely in Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniels new book, “Nourishing Broth.” This book explains the science behind the healing, personal stories, recipes and more. I highly recommend it.