Bone broth has become a staple in our home. We love to use it to cook our rice or quinoa in, add it to soups and stews, or just sip it straight out of a mug. There are a lot of health benefits of this broth, it can reduce inflammation, fight infections, helps joint and muscle pain, supports healthy hair, skin and nails, and helps to repair leaky gut just to name a few.

I have struggled with digestive issues since my childhood consisted of eating processed foods, and I constantly filled my stomach with anything that contained gluten. It was far from a balanced diet unfortunately. These foods can actually irritate the lining of the gut, punching small holes in that very important and protective membrane. Food particles can leak out into your system, and an autoimmune reaction may occur. I was having sudden onset sensitivities to food that I never had before (like gluten). My body was flagging it as an invader when it was outside of the digestive track and creating what looked like an allergic response. I saw a holistic practitioner in Berkeley since I wanted to get to the root of the symptoms, not just put a patch on the problem. After time and a lengthy consultation, she was the one who suggested leaky gut and recommended the bone broth (along with the dietary changes I had already made). I learned that the collagen present in bone broth is healing for the gut, and I was willing to try anything. Back then I had no knowledge of any of this, and thought ”bone broth” sounded disgusting. Come to find out, it’s basically just broth but cooked longer to pull all of that amazing collagen out. If you have any symptoms of leaky gut, you must try this!

We do buy the bonafide brand from whole foods and sprouts (in the freezer section) but love to save money and make a homemade batch when possible. Usually we do this after using a rotisserie chicken and use the scraps to make the healing broth.

We have been doing this for about a year now, and have definitely made some mistakes, but really the whole process is so easy!

We grab any kitchen scraps that we have from veggies or leftovers- but we have found that we love carrots, celery, onion and garlic best.

No need to dice, or spend any time at all on prepping this, just give it a rough chop and toss it in the crock pot. We add approx. 2 cups of veggies.

We take the bones from the chicken and break them up a bit (can be made out of any type of bones), this time we had some meat left on the chicken and just tossed that in there as well.

Add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (this helps to leech the minerals out of the bones and has health benefits of its own)

Add 12 cups of water to cover the contents. Also add any seasonings you would like. Peppercorns, parsley, thyme, and cayenne, are some of our favorites. This time we did a plain batch that I will salt, pepper, and add parsley to before drinking.

Slow cook for at least 8 hours but up to 24 hours. Ours usually goes for about 14 hours and we notice that we love the flavor and can see all of the fat/collagen that is drawn out on the surface. That’s what you want in your bone broth.

We double strain the batch (cheesecloth would work if you have that on hand), and drink our first cup straight away. I store the bone broth in the fridge for up to 5 days in a glass container or freeze for later use.