Liquid Gold: How to incorporate bone broths into meals
Recently someone asked me how they can incorporate bone broths into more of their meals. Great question!! Here are 8 suggestions:
add some broth to bottom of saucepan in place of water when re-heating food to prevent food from sticking
add 1-2 tablespoons of gelatinous beef broth in your smoothies (you wont taste it!)
add broth instead of water to cover or partly cover food when making a casserole
use broth as the base of soups instead of water (eg use chicken stock as the base for making pumpkin soup, throw in some steamed veggies to any type of broth for a vegetable soup)
use ready made bovine gelatin to make jelly for kids’ parties. This can be purchased for $39.50 on line at GPA Wholefoods. This product contains one ingredient- ground up beef bones. This is one of the very few packaged products that I buy/recommend. I used this to make a fabulous watermelon jelly for my daughter’s birthday party earlier this year using only 3 ingredients – bovine gelatin, boiling water to dissolve the gelatin and watermelon. There was NO ADDED SWEETENER!! I added 1 tablespoon of beef gelatin (dissolved in a little boiling water) for every 1 cup of watermelon. I reckon you might be able to do the same thing with home made gelatinous beef broth - I haven’t tried it but would be very interested to see how this turned out. I would try mixingbeef broth with mango flesh and refrigerating to make a mango jelly in summer…… I’ll try next summer and report back! It sounds bizarre, I know, but beef broth is rather tasteless when cold so adding it to fruit to make a jelly might work a treat.
adding a few tablespoons of beef or chicken broth to the food processor when making pate, especially if you want to thin down your mixture.
for the brave-hearted - eating cold gelatinous beef broth straight off the spoon –my daughter loves eating it like this. A good bone broth should have a jelly consistency when cold so scoop it out of your jar from the fridge and watch it giggle on a spoon stright into little ones mouths…..just 1 mouthful is like medicine!
serve ½ - 1 cup of broth as an entrée to at least one meal a day (eg dinner). My family knows the drill well- if you don’t drink your broth you don’t get your main meal. Broth is served as an entrée in many traditional cultures. And for good reason- the gelatin in the broth aids in digesting your meal especially meats. The broth can be served plain or you can jazz it up a bit by:
adding a squeeze of lemon and salt to chicken broth (very Cypriot),
blending an egg and parmeson cheese into beef broth when heating it (if adding the whole egg make sure that the broth heats up the egg white enough to cook it otherwise just add the yolk – egg whites should never be consumed raw. As to why- refer to one of my previous posts)
adding caramelised onion and garlic and some sage and thyme to beef broth to make a quick French onion soup
adding some lemon, butter and paprika to fish stock.
Bone-Broth image
If you have any further suggestions I'd love to hear them.
What’s so special about bone broths? When making broth the water molecules tug apart the connective tissue in skin, ligaments, cartilage and even bone releasing a special family of joint-building molecules called glycosaminoglycans (part of the collagen family of biomolecules). The 3 most famous members of this family are glucosamine, chondriotin sulfate and hyaluronic acid. These are often found in nutritional supplements but these processed supplements are not a patch on gelatinous stocks which house the entire extended family of glycosaminoglycans.
Glucosamine is somehow able to resist normal digestive processes and pass through the intestinal wall intact. Once it gets into your bloodstream it targets cartilage. It stimulates the growth of new healthy collagen and helps repair damaged joints. Collagen is not just in our joints but in bone, skin, arteries, hair and just about everything in between! This means bone broth is a kind of youth serum capable of rejuvenating your body no matter what your age. It is especially important for athletes and anyone with osteo-skeletal issues. Recently a beautician friend asked me if I had botox. Ha! She looked a bit puzzled when I told her that a long time ago I replaced expensive face creams and body lotions with $5 bags of bones from my butcher and watched my skin glow!