How to Make Bone Broth

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Bone broth is AMAZING, versatile, and has many health benefits.  

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The health-boosting properties of bone broth to your gut, joints, and immunity are well-known in other cultures and for some reason not as well-known in ours.  You can make bone broth and can it or freeze it, or you can just drink it and use it fresh.

Where to get the bones

Each time I cook a whole chicken or a whole turkey I like to use the carcass and make a batch of healing bone broth.

You can make bone broth from soup bones, marrow bones, oxtail,  chicken/turkey feet, skin, and bones. This is a great way to use every part of the animal and not waste any.

 

We just recently butchered our chickens  (you can see the video from our youtube channel here) and in an effort to use every single part of them and not let anything go to waste, we’ve been making bone broth these last few days.

In case you are wondering why we’d butcher our girls (some folks on other forums/groups had questions), let me fill you in. They had stopped laying and they were still eating. That means $$$$ money spent on food and no money coming for eggs. We are getting new layer chicks and we just don’t have a place for them to live together. We would rather eat them and get broth than let them become part of the food chain somewhere else. Also, our primary goal on this farm is food production for our family above all else and business second.

So there you have it. If you’d like to discuss this further, please reach out to me.

Side note: We love to buy turkeys when they are on sale around Thanksgiving and Christmas. You can find them for cents per pound. It’s amazing. We cook them all year long and don’t wait for the holidays. My husband smokes them on the Big Green Egg. Mmmmm so good. Plus, super easy weeknight meal and then leftovers.

 

Flavorful and rich

Back to the bone broth. Onions, celery, and carrots are a must. I love herby flavors so I will add savory herbs like thyme, bay leaves, and whatever smells good to me at the moment to chicken or turkey broth. I love herbs de Provence in beef bone broth. All you need to make bone broth is the bones (or whatever else you might be adding to it … see above) enough water to cover it in a large pot or crockpot, onions, celery, carrots, apple cider vinegar, and time. It will take anywhere from 10-24 hrs to cook. You can also do this in an Instapot over the course of 2 hrs on high.

I recently learned how to can it. I learned from none other than the preserving/canning queen herself … my mother-in-law, Mrs. Terry. If you want to can the bone broth after making it you will need to leave 1″ headspace and process the pints for 20 minutes with 10 lbs of pressure or quarts for 25 minutes with 10 lbs of pressure. Altitude will affect these processing times so be sure to adjust accordingly. Here is a guide.

It did turn out to be a project that took up most of the day, but it was totally worth it. Now we will have bone broth on hand through the year.

Bonus: your house will smell amazing while cooking this broth.

Tips: use bone broth as the liquid to cook rice, grits, or pasta, as a starter for soups like chicken stew, chicken and dumplings, gumbo