Bone Broth Recipe

Normal people call it "broth." That's really all it is - homemade broth.

This is my third Winter using bone broth, and I am willing to swear it's why I haven't gotten the creeping crud in that amount of time. While the rest of the office sounds like a Nyquil commercial, I'm doing fine.

I originally tried it for my teeth, but that was a bust. Turns out, it increases tartar, which is why it's important to buy antibiotic-free animals. I use chicken, but this could be done with anything that has bones. According to the blood type diet, chicken is poisonous to blood types B and AB, so those folks should definitely use something else to make their broth.

You're looking at 16 hours for this. I usually start the chicken between 10 and noon on a Saturday, debone it for dinner, and cook the bones overnight.

Chicken Bone Broth recipe

1. Cook a whole, antibiotic-free fryer chicken in a crockpot for 6 hours. Keep in mind, you'll be dissolving this sucker to ingest. Don't skimp on the wholesome goodness. Then again, you'll be making this once or twice a month, so don't be crazy, either. Don't add anything to the pot except the bird. It will cook just fine by itself.

2. Debone the chicken. This takes about 20 minutes if you haven't over-cooked the bird and you're being measured by seven animals trying to decide which would taste better - the bird, or you if you don't hand it over. Use the meat any way you'd normally use chicken.

3. Put all the bones back in the crockpot. I also add whatever skin and fat I haven't offered to the furbabies.

4. Add water. How much depends on how concentrated you want your broth, and how much space you have in your crockpot. I generally add about 6 cups. Enough to easily cover the bones.

5. Add lemon juice for blood types A, or vinegar for blood types O. The acid breaks down the bones, and that's why you're doing this.

5. Cook bones for another 10 hours. You can smash them up a bit after 5 hours, if you're awake.

6. Strain into another container to cool. A colander works fine to catch the bones and big chunks. I put that stuff into the trash because even though the bones are soft enough to crush with my tongue (I've tried it), I don't take risks with giving bones to my furbabies. The broth will form tallow on top, and aspic (jelly) on the bottom. These things all melt back into broth when heated, so don't be a sissy.

7. I separate the broth into 2 cup containers, and freeze all but one. I add broth to anything I'm cooking, and I've been known to just heat a cup and drink it if I feel I need an immune boost. You'll need to add salt if you do this.

You can add garlic and ginger to the broth for additional immune boosting, but I don't because the cats lick my bowls and garlic is poisonous to them.

That's it. If you can get over the ick factor of ripping apart a carcass, you, too, can enjoy amazing health benefits.

Applaud the jellyfish.