Why Make Bone Broth?

Fall and winter for a lot of people means soup season has arrived. Nothing beats homemade soup! And what a better way to support your immune system and get beneficial nutrients than to make a nourishing bone broth. Bone broth is absolutely delicious, can be used in a wide variety of recipes, is extremely easy to make, and has numerous health benefits. You can read more about those health benefits here. And! Since you are primarily using your kitchen scraps it is basically free. In addition to being very economical making our own bone broth helps us to maintain our low/near zero waste lifestyle.

What you’ll need

• A crock pot or instant pot. Bone broth can be made in either one, but a crock pot will take much longer. My preferred method is my Instant pot.
• Leftover bones. We mostly use chicken and turkey bones, but any leftover animal bone can be used. I find one large zip lock bag full of bones to be a good amount to use, but you can use as many bones as you can fit into your pot.
• Veggie scraps. Carrots, celery, onion or chives, potato or sweet potato peels, or any other scraps you feel like using. Different scrap ratios will yield different flavors in your final outcome. We primarily use carrot, celery, and chive scraps.
• Water
• Salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, or any other seasoning you feel like using.

Directions

You will follow the same directions for both cooking in the crockpot and the instant pot, the only difference will be the amount of time needed for cooking. You will also need to slow release the Instant pot once it is done cooking.

• Place all your bone and veggie scraps and your desired seasonings in your pot. I put about 2tsp of pink Himalayan salt and 1tbsp of poultry seasoning. Fill your pot with water. There should be about an inch of water above the food scraps.
• If using a crock pot cook on low for 24hrs, if using an instant pot cook on high for 2hrs. (Let the Instant pot slow release for 20-25 minutes before depressurizing and removing the lid)
• Carefully strain out the scraps and ladle the broth into jars and allow to cool. This will take a couple hours.
• You can either can or freeze your jars for storage.

That’s that! It really is that simple.

Application

Bone broth can be used in a wide variety of soups and other recipes like gravy and sauces, or it can be drunk on its own. There are several health benefits from daily consumption and many people drink plain bone broth daily. We try to incorporate it into our diets at least once a week. We will drink plain bone broth when recovering from illnesses.

Final Notes

Bone broth is fun to experiment with to find the exact blend of seasonings you prefer. While a “perfect” broth will be gelatinous bone broth is perfectly good to use even if it doesn’t gel. After it cools some people prefer to scrape the fat layer off, but we prefer to leave it because it is a healthy fat with multiple health benefits. Enjoy!