Bone broth has become very popular recently, especially among health-conscious individuals. This is because it’s believed to have many health benefits. Although there is no published research on bone broth itself, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests drinking it may be very beneficial. It’s restorative, nourishing, and filled with age-defying collagen.
For such reasons, Homemade Bone Broth seems to be everywhere these days. Easy and versatile, Learn How to Make Bone Broth with my easy-to-follow instructions, tips, and answers to all your bone broth frequently asked questions. Yes, of course, bone broth is not a magical healing drink that will solve all your problems, but it has very unique bodybuilders.
In fact, most of its supporters claim it’s good for your gut, and can reduce joint pain. Whilst, making you sleep better (like a baby), and even helping make you live longer (by increasing your lifespan). What’s more, bone broth is easy to digest, these nutrients are easy for the body to absorb. Making it more available to the body — especially for digestive issues.
What Bone Broth Is All About + Its Key Benefits
By definition, bone broth (bone soup) is made by simmering the bones and connective tissue of animals. It’s a highly nutritious stock that is commonly used in soups, sauces, and gravies. Recently, it has gained popularity as a health drink. Besides its popularity today, bone broth dates back to prehistoric times — when hunters/gatherers turned otherwise cooks.
They turned inedible animal parts (bones, hooves, and knuckles) into a broth they could drink. Meaning, that you can make bone broth using bones from just about any animal. For example, pork, beef, veal, turkey, lamb, bison, buffalo, venison, chicken, or fish. In addition, bone marrow and connective tissues like feet, hooves, beaks, gizzards, or fins can be used.
So, what are the overall benefits of bone broth? Firstly, bone broth can be sipped straight as a health tonic. That’s why we like stirring in nutritional yeast, sea salt, and black pepper to taste. Plus a little miso and some green onions and minced garlic. It’s comforting, warming, and nourishing. In fact, bone broth is high in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.
Specifically, these are acute elements and key building blocks which are full of protein (one of the major components of a healthy body). It also contains a high amount of collagen, which may help support bone and joint health. However, experts warn that there’s not enough research to support all these claims — not yet! Otherwise, below are more related benefits:
1. Helps the digestive system
Scientists have discovered that your overall health depends heavily on the health of your intestinal tract. Not only is bone broth easy to digest, but it may also aid in the digestion of other foods. The gelatin found in bone broth naturally attracts and holds liquids. This is why properly prepared broth congeals are in the fridge.
Gelatin can also bind to water in your digestive tract, which helps foods move through your gut more easily. It has also been shown to protect and heal the mucosal lining of the digestive tract in rats. It is thought to have the same effect in humans, but more research needs to be done to show its effectiveness.
An amino acid in gelatin called glutamine helps maintain the function of the intestinal wall and has been known to prevent and heal a condition known as “leaky gut.” A leaky gut, which is associated with several chronic diseases, is when the barrier between your gut and the bloodstream is impaired.
Substances that your body doesn’t normally allow leak into your bloodstream, which leads to inflammation and other problems. For all of these reasons, drinking bone broth may be beneficial for individuals with leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), or irritable bowel diseases (IBD), such as ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease.
2. Helps to fight inflammation
By the same token, the amino acids found in bone broth, including glycine and arginine, have strong anti-inflammatory effects. Arginine, in particular, may help fight the inflammation associated with obesity. One study shows higher levels of arginine in the blood are associated with decreased inflammation in obese women.
Another study in rats suggests that supplementing with arginine could help fight inflammation in obese individuals, but more research needs to be done in humans to support these results. While some inflammation is necessary, chronic inflammation may lead to a number of serious diseases.
These include heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc. As well as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, and many types of cancer. Because of this, it’s important to eat plenty of anti-inflammatory foods as well as include other antioxidants food and anti-aging fruits in your dietary plan to supplement/complement your health with chronic disease-fighting agents.
3. It is weight loss friendly
Bone broth is typically very low in calories, but can still satisfy hunger. Studies have found that eating broth-based soup on a regular basis can increase fullness, reduce calorie intake and lead to weight loss over time. What’s more, bone broth contains gelatin, which has specifically been shown to promote feelings of fullness.
Many people don’t get enough of these nutrients in their diet, so drinking bone broth is a good way to get more. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to know the exact amount of each nutrient contained in the broth because of a variety of reasons. For instance, every batch of bones is so different, the maturity of the bone marrow, it’s quotient ratio, etc.
One study found that gelatin was more effective at reducing hunger than the protein casein, which is found in dairy products. Another study of 53 men found that, when combined with resistance training, collagen helped increase muscle mass and decrease body fat. This means, that taking bone broth now and then can highly influence your overall body mass.
4. It contains useful vitamins and minerals
In general, bone broth is very nutritious. However, the nutrient content does depend on the ingredients you use, as each brings something different to the table. Animal bones are rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and other trace minerals — the same minerals needed to build and strengthen your own bones.
Equally important, fish soup from fish bones also contains iodine — for healthy thyroid function and metabolism. Connective tissue gives you glucosamine and chondroitin, natural compounds found in cartilage that are known to support joint health. Quality marrow provides vitamin A, vitamin K2, and minerals (like zinc, iron, boron, manganese, and selenium).
As well as omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. All of these animal parts also contain the protein collagen, which turns into gelatin when cooked and yields several important amino acids. As the ingredients simmer, their nutrients are released into the water in a form your body can easily absorb.
5. It usually improves joint health
As an example, collagen is the main protein found in bones, tendons, and ligaments. During the cooking process, collagen from bones and connective tissue is broken down into another protein called gelatin. Gelatin contains important amino acids that support joint health. It contains proline and glycine, which your body uses to build its own connective tissue.
This includes tendons, which connect muscles to bones, and ligaments, which connect bones to each other. Bone broth also contains glucosamine and chondroitin, which are natural compounds found in cartilage. Multiple studies have found that glucosamine and chondroitin can decrease joint pain and lessen the symptoms of osteoarthritis.
The proteins in bone broth also proved beneficial for those with rheumatoid arthritis too — a chronic autoimmune disease that causes painful damage to the tendons and ligaments. In one study, 60 people with this arthritis consumed chicken collagen for 3 months. Significantly, symptoms improved in all participants, with 4 showing complete remission.
6. For quality sleep and brain functionality
As a matter of fact, the amino acid glycine, found in bone broth, may help you relax. Multiple studies have found that glycine helps promote beauty sleep quality so that you’ll sleep like a baby in the long run. And, as a result, you won’t get that disturbed sleep since you’ll be deeply enjoying your night behind those bedsheets.
Ultimately, one study found that taking 3 grams of glycine before bed significantly improved the quality of sleep in individuals who have difficulty sleeping. Taking glycine before bed helped participants fall asleep faster, maintain a deeper sleep, and wake up fewer times throughout the night. It also found that glycine reduced daytime sleepiness.
Additionally, it also improves normal mental health functionality and memory wokeness (especially, for those who are just recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or even after hospitalization due to a critical accident). Therefore, drinking bone broth could have similar benefits to many painkillers, medical supplements, health boosters, etc.
Where To Acquire Bones + Steps For A DIY Recipe
To begin with, instead of throwing leftover bones and carcasses from meals in the garbage, save them to make broth. You can collect the bones in a bag and store them in your freezer until you are ready to cook them. However, if you are not someone who just buys and eats whole chicken/bone-in meat, you may wonder where to find animal bones, right?
Well, you can ask for them at your local butcher or farmers market. The meat department at most grocery stores will often have them too. The best part is they are very inexpensive to purchase. Your butcher may even give them to you for free. If you are considering going DIY (do it yourself), try to find pastured chicken or grass-fed beef bones from the seller.
May it be pork, beef, veal, turkey, lamb, bison, buffalo, venison, chicken, or even fish. Obviously, this is because such animals will be the healthiest of them all. And they’ll, definitely, provide maximum health benefits to your family.
How To Make Bone Broth
Just like we aforementioned, bone soup that leads to a thick broth is made by boiling down animal bones and connective tissue. This nutrient-dense stock is used for soups, sauces, and health drinks. And now, generally speaking, making bone broth is actually quite easy — not forgetting, there are many recipes online, but most people don’t even use a recipe.
But, in order to make the most nutritious broth, it is best to use a variety of bones. Especially, the marrow bones, oxtail, knuckles, and feet. Also, you can even mix and match bones in the same batch. Adding vinegar is important because it helps pull all of the valuable nutrients out of the bones and into the water. After all, which is what you’ll be consuming.
In most cases, you can drink your bone broth all by itself. But, not everyone necessarily likes the texture and mouthfeel. Luckily, there are other ways to enjoy it — it can be used as the base for soups, or to make sauces and gravies. And now, having said that, one thing is for sure, all you really need is a large pot, water, vinegar, and bones.
Moreover, even the wholesome bone marrow and connective tissues like feet, hooves, beaks, gizzards, or fins can also be used. Having said that, in order to get you started correctly, below is an easy homemade DIY recipe that you can follow and try out in your next dietary plan. And then you can share your overall experience with us and other readers thereafter.
Ingredients:
- 1 gallon (4 liters) of water
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) apple cider vinegar
- 2–4 pounds (about 1–2 kg) of animal bones
- Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions:
- Place all ingredients in a large pot or slow cooker,
- Add a reasonable amount of water to the mixture,
- Bring the mixture to a boil,
- Reduce to a simmer and cook for around 8 hours
- Allow the broth to cool down first before serving,
- And then, strain the broth into a large container and discard the solids.
Note that the longer it takes for you to boil and cook your bone broth, the better it will taste and the more nutritious it will be. Your first serving can be between 8-12 hours (the juiciest part). Then, thereafter, you can add some more water (it highly depends on the volume). And leave it to boil/simmer for the next few hours (+6 more hours) before the next serving.
Be that as it may, you can also add leafy green vegetables, healthy herbs & spices, or even any other ingredients you’ll deem fit to your bone broth to enhance the flavor. Other common additional ingredients include garlic, onion, celery, carrots, parsley, thyme, and the like, and they all can be added right away in step one.
How To Store Your Bone Broth
As you can see, bone broth is incredibly easy to make. Once it has simmered for 10-12 hours and reduced, strain and store as desired. In reality, some of you would prefer adding it straight to soup with some of the leftover shredded chicken. For example, this 1-pot pumpkin black beans soup or this 1-pot chicken soup with white beans and kale are perfect samples.
It can also be stored in glass jars and frozen for up to 1-2 months or more. Be sure to leave a couple of inches at the top of the jar — to allow for the freezer expansion. Typically, it’s good to note that it often gelatinizes when refrigerated because of the collagen content. But, don’t worry — that’s normal. Naturally, whenever it’s reheated, it liquefies once again.
Always remember, the liquification process happens just like the way it does for your store-bought chicken broth. In nutshell, while it’s easy to make bone broth in large batches, it can only be stored safely in the refrigerator for up to five days. To help it last longer, you can freeze it in small containers and heat up individual servings as needed.
Of course, there is no straightforward answer to how often you should take bone soup or bone broth for that matter. Many people recommend drinking 1 cup (237 ml) of bone broth daily for maximum health benefits. Some are better than none, so whether it be once a week or once a day, drink it as often as you can.
Other Related Resource References:
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- 10-Day Detox Program Guide By Jane
- Medicinal Herbs For Your Kitchen Garden
- Kidney Stones: When Should You See A Doctor?
- Can a Salt Water Flush help you Lose Weight?
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