Bone Broth

I have made broth many times. Plop a chicken in the pot with onion, carrots, celery, salt, a few whole cloves and a bunch of water, simmer it for a couple of hours, strain out the chunks and it’s a good base for soups and sauces. Or, roast some meaty beef bones in the oven, add them to a pot of water with onions, carrots, celery, salt and a bay leaf, and simmer and strain. Easy. I don’t even look in my cookbook anymore. I may not be Julia Child, but it’s just broth.

My husband’s recent health issues required him to be on a liquid diet, so I wanted whatever he drank to be as healthy and nutritious as possible. The day before he was coming home from the hospital, I decided to take broth more seriously and make bone broth. I went to the store to collect the ingredients for this elixir of the good life, knowing that “sipping on bone broth” has become the preferred health insurance of the hipster-paleo eaters I see on Facebook.

This was not a Safeway trip. I went instead to Andronico’s, the high-end grocery store nearby, in search of meaty bones from pasture-raised, grass-fed-and-finished, antibiotic-free, ethically-raised cows, or a cage-free, free-run, hormone-free, grain-only, ethically-raised chicken. Only the best bones for this bone broth.

Andronico’s had chicken that met my broth standards, but nothing that would work for the beef broth. I crossed the street to a little shop called The Local Butcher. It’s great–I have been there before, and love their quality and ethical sourcing. They buy whole animals from small, organic farms and their products are the best. It’s the perfect place to get good bones.

This time, I was following a recipe so I could get the broth just right, and it called for four pounds of bones. I asked for that at the counter, and the butcher brought out a big tub full of chunks of white bones with beautiful red meat clinging to them. They were really nice soup bones. She piled them on the scale, wrapped them up and asked if I would like anything else. I picked out a few more things–some ground beef, sausage and a dog treat–and took my purchases to the register.

I tried not to let my expression change when the total was much higher than I expected. I was just getting some bones, hamburger and hotdogs. “How much are the soup bones per pound?” I asked casually. They were more per pound than pure chunks of meat at Safeway. Or Andronico’s.

I took them home, carefully roasted them, lovingly transfered them to a large pot, nestled organic vegetables around them, and added the water. I poured in a few cups more water than the recipe called for, hoping to stretch the goodness a little.

When all was cooked and cooled and strained, I ended up with seven cups of rich, glorious broth. This was precious liquid. I hoped it would have all the wonderful, healing properties associated with bone broth in concentrated form, because there probably wasn’t going to be any more of it.

I told a friend about my pricey soup bones, and she gasped. “No, don’t get them THERE,” she said. She is a bone-broth sipper. She shared her source with me, another local butcher who apparently hasn’t caught on to the bone-broth craze and realized what he could charge.

My husband is finally better, and I can’t say for sure if the bone broth made any difference in his healing.  Making it–and even spending so much on it–was healing for me, though. When life feels out of control, at least I can make sure that every last drop of bone broth is as perfect as I can possibly make it.