Bone Stock

Stop buying canned chicken broth.

Stock is one of the easiest things to make. throw bones in a pot with Celery, onion, garlic, and carrots. Salt and pepper, then simmer until the collagen flows from the bones.

There is broth and stock. Lets define the two. Stock is an extraction of bones. Stock includes all the fats and waters. It is strained to get the bits out and then stored. Broth is made by separating the water based fluids from the fat. I am certain there is some elaborate process that big manufacturers use to separate the fats from the waters. At home, let the stock begin to cool on the stove top. This will give the fats a chance to begin separating. then move it to the fridge while still warm and leave it overnight. the next day scrape off the fat cap and you have broth.

We do not make broth as I feel the fats are good. Our family is active and healthy. Our bodies need fat and our fats are mostly good as our animals are all grazing all year long. Animals that get more fodder than grain have a much greater ratio of Omega-3 to Omega 6. I also leave the fats in the stock due to flavor. Fat is flavor and recipes made with my bone stock come out richer and tastier.

So how do we do it? Save your bones is the first step. My family has it engrained not to throw away bones. We do eat a lot of bone-in meat. We also only eat the meat we harvest ourselves, so we never are at a loss for bones. One of our freezers has a bin for bones. That bin holds about the same amount as my stock pot, so when the bin is full, we make stock. This is a process. If you only have one freezer, it probably wont work for you as bones will take up precious space. Though, you can also make smaller batches more often. You can also ask the butcher in the store for stock bones. Most will give them free or for very little money.

We also use a lot of stock so generally we have a depleted supply about the same time we have a full bone bin. The bones are all dumped in the pot frozen. All the animals together both raw and cooked. Ex: a gallon ziplock of raw rabbit bones from the last slaughter, chicken bones from southern fried chicken, raw duck bones from the last duck slaughter (we debone and grind a lot of our ducks.) and pork bones from a smoked shoulder. On top of these bones goes two or three onions quartered with the skins still on, a half dozen carrots cut up into big chunks, a half dozen celery stalks cut the same, and two or three cloves of garlic smashed with the skins still on. Season with a handful of sea salt (more or less to your needs but make sure you add at least a little.) Fill it up with clean spring water about 3 inches from the top, and put the heat on low. Walk away. It will take a couple hours for the bones to thaw and everything to get up to temperature. Don't rush this. Let it take all day. We are then going to simmer the pot all day give or take. We are looking for the meat to fall off the bones and for it to appear that the contents of the bones has released from the bones. Anywhere from three to 8 hours depending on the size of the pot and size of the flame. This is not a situation where you can use high heat and get it all done faster. Remember you are not trying to roast anything, we are trying to extract. It takes time for the collagen to liquify, not just heat.

Once it is done, we have to store it. We pressure can ours when we have enough jars. We also use giant pickle jars we get at the Restaurant Depot and store them in the fridge. The fridge can hold our stock safe for three months. Preserved stock has lasted for three years. It is generally recommended that you only preserve for a year at most. Still, we missed a jar and found it three years later. It was good as new. I must admit that we would store it longer, but we use it fast.

Now we have a 30qt stock pot filled to the brim with boiling liquid. You can see the golden fats swirling around the bubbles. We now have to get all the chunks out of the liquid and this 212 degree fluid into canning jars. Process your canning equipment as you always do. Want to hear a secret? I haven't boiled a jar, lid, or ring in 20 years. I also reuse my lids two or three times before I throw them out. We have a 90% seal rate with used lids. This has saved us hundreds of dollars over the last two decades. The few lids that don't seal go in the fridge and we use them first...easy peasy.

The straining is the most tedious part of the process. At the beginning, I use a 4 cup measure to scoop out of the stockpot. I place a colander over another stockpot and pour the measuring cup into the colander. You now have to make a decision. what to do with the bones and vegies? The easiest option is to pull the garbage can over and pitch the colander contents into it. We try to use everything to its fullest at Farm Life Farm.

Most batches of stock, we use the leftovers for dog food. We toss the biggest bones to our farm dogs whole. All the little bones and veggie bits go into a bucket and we drop a sledgehammer into it repeatedly until everything is broken into bits. We mix this into their kibble. Other batches, we bring out and mix into our compost pile. Other times, we place some tinfoil on the gas grill, lay all the bones out and turn it on low and cook them until dry and brittle and smash them into bone meal for our garden. In the past, we brought the leftovers deep into the woods for the animals to eat. We would always find the spot barren the next day. More physical work but no financial cost. Also, you are ensuring that your fertilizer is all natural with no chemicals...that is priceless in our current world of food that is poisoned. Now that we have a full livestock farm, feeding the apex predators is not the best plan, but going a mile into the forest before we dump it does not seem to have a negative impact on our farm. Some old timers have pointed out that they never suffered predation on the night that they dumped offal in the woods. I remain apprehensive with raw offal as I fear it gives the predators a taste for our animals. Composting the bones and bits is always a good plan. Just ensure that you get the bones deep into the compost pile. You don't want your dogs, coyotes, fox, or anything else getting to it. If your compost pile provides an easy meal, those predators will stay close.

Recap: We have made the stock and got it all strained through a standard colander. We then give a quick rinse to the original stockpot and add a fine mesh strainer. We pour the strained stock through the fine mesh strainer and then we transfer it into the canning jars. We used to do a third filter with cheesecloth but that is tedious and takes forever. We just don't mind anything small enough to fit through the mesh strainer.

We tend to continue using that measuring cup to pour the hot liquid into the canning jars. Leave one inch of headspace and put them into the pressure canner. 20 pounds of pressure. Twenty minutes for pint jars and thirty for quart.

I have not made rice with plain water in years. We use our stock. Want to make lipton cup a soup, a pint of bone broth and a handful of noodles and a sprinkle of dried parsley. Boil the noodle in the stock and done. My daughters 12 and 8, prefer this now to the box soup.

Help yourself to increasing nutrition decreasing waste.