How To Make Bone Broth
Written by
Ros Heathcote
Here’s how I see it; My business, based here in the UK, makes bone broth. We pride ourselves on the sourcing and ethics behind each and every ingredient we use. We also refuse to make short cuts. We cook it for 24 hours and every ingredient we use is whole and in its original form.
However, bone broth is one of the most wonderful things to make yourself. Every time I made a batch at home I found it not only delicious and nourishing, but also hugely rewarding and satisfying to know I was using an ingredient that might have otherwise been thrown away or worse incinerated to avoid expensive waste removal and land fill. Bones, despite the sometimes gruesome or morbid imagery they can sometimes conjure; are a hugely untapped source of nutrition.
Despite our mission to buy well sourced bones and create great products, we also want to encourage and drive more people to opt for organic products, to use more of the animal, to challenge themselves to overcome any resistance to understand where meat comes from and to embrace and support ethical farming. Making bone broth is easy if you have the right equipment or set up, you also need time. But once you’ve made it a few times you can play around with it, add and remove things as you wish and make it your own.
Bones: Ask your butcher or supplier to make sure they're small enough to fit in your pan.. You can decide the mix, beef and chicken work well together. Lamb and beef bones are more fatty and marrow bones are less gelatinous and more flavoursome and fatty. Stock bones with cartilage have more gelatine which will cause the broth to gel more which is what many strive for and if you have the choice a little meat left on the bone never goes amiss. Have a play around with a mix and work out what you like. For health and safety reasons I'd suggest using a slow cooker. You can buy slow cookers quite easily these days with plenty available online.
In my experience if you want to use the hob of your oven, leaving it on the very lowest heat setting overnight with enough water in the pan will be fine, but do this at your own risk. If you've never made it before it might be worth starting your first batch in the morning and ending the cook at night after 12-14 hours so you can gauge the temperature of your lowest setting on your oven and understand how safe it might be to leave it overnight next time. Every oven varies. However if you want to cook it overnight, I'd recommend starting it just before bed so the water level is at its highest and risk of the pan drying is much lower.
One final tip. If you’re cooking organic meat at home and there’s a bone or carcass leftover – put them in the freezer until you have enough to make a batch of broth. They’ll soon add up.
To see the step by step instructions, check out our recipe for Bone Broth.
