I thought I should follow up that doozy of a first post with a simple one. One of the easiest, yummiest, and healthiest things I have done to improve my health and heal my gut was to start making and cooking with/drinking homemade bone broth. The stuff in the store is crap, do not buy it! Cans and cartons have BPA in them, and most store bought broths have chemicals in them that you don't want to ingest. And making broth is so freakin' easy!!! If you have a crock pot it is the easiest, but doing it on the stove is doable too, you just have to be home to do it. The calcium and minerals in bone broth are readily available to your body (great for healing deficiencies) and the gelatin from the cartilage in the bones helps heal the mucosal lining in your gut (if you have an auto immune disease or a food allergy, this is imperative). I prefer organic grass fed beef marrow bones from one of our fab butchers in SC, but you should be able to get marrow bones from the butcher at most grocery stores. You can also make broth with a chicken carcass, but you won't get as much gelatin from their smaller bones. Here is how I do it:
3-4 marrow bones (organic grass fed beef)
1 knuckle bone- if I can get it (organic grass fed beef)
2 tablespoons vinegar per quart filtered water (I use Bragg's ACV)- the vinegar helps pull the minerals out of the bones.
I plop the bones in the crock pot, fill the pot with water, add the appropriate amount of vinegar, and turn it on low for 48 hours. Beef bones take longer, and it is recommended to cook them like this for at least 48 hours. Chicken bones can be cooked for less time. I usually leave my broth on for 3-4 days, stewing away, because I like my broth really nice and rich. I usually have a batch going on the counter in the kitchen, since we cook with it and sometimes just drink mugs of it, and I like to have a least one gallon mason jar full of it in the fridge to use when I want it.
If you try it, let me know what you think! Cheers.
