Dawson Valley Free Range

Dawson Valley Free Range

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Bone Broth

Bone Broth - is it stock or broth? From what I can gather it is probably a stock, but the generally accepted term is Bone Broth. So what is it? It's the product of a long cooked stock using bones, preferably a mix of gelatinous bones and marrow bones. By long cooking, I mean at least 24 hours on a very slow simmer. This is to ensure that you get as much goodness out of the bones as possible. There's lots of information on the web, so I won't go into all that in this post.

We sell both broth and the bones to make your own. The broth I make usually has a combination of bones - chicken, pork and beef. I use a chicken carcass and chicken feet, pork trotters, pork back bones and beef back and leg (marrow) bones. I usually do this for 24 to 36 hours. I don't add any vegetables to my broth, just the bones - soaked in the water with added apple cider vinegar first, then some bay leaf, salt and pepper. Sometimes I throw in a teaspoon full of dulse flakes. The pork trotter and chicken feet are excellent to use to make your broth gel. Pork makes a very bland flavoured broth so is excellent to use where you want to add other flavours in the final dish.

If you are feeling poorly - getting a cold, tummy upset or just feeling off, a cup of warmed up broth with some added garlic, ginger, turmeric and chilli can really help! Other wise, I just use my bone broth in things - if a recipe calls for stock OR water I use bone broth instead. 

Some options are below, but please put any more in the comments:
  • Any Soup
  • My Asian Style Pork Meatballs (just scroll down a little way after clicking on this link)
  • Cook Rice in broth
  • Curries and Stews, instead of water
  • Baked Beans
  • Congee - Rice Porridge, but it's so much nicer than how that sounds. 
Congee with Egg and herbs


I use brown rice usually, but it's traditionally done with white. I use a slow cooker so that I can put it on at night and all I need to do in the morning is chop up my herbs and make the accompaniments, plus fry or poach an egg. It's a good way to feed a few people, because it does make a fair bit of rice porridge.

Ingredients
1 cup of brown rice
4 cups bone broth
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped ginger
1 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon dulse flakes
some dried sliced shitake mushrooms - about a handful and crush them roughly in your hands before adding.

Put all ingredients into the crockpot, on low and cook overnight. OR place all ingredients in a pot and cook on very low on the stove for several hours. If using white rice, it will take about 1 1/2 hours, brown a fair bit longer. You want a very well cooked rice and the broth will be quite thick.

Accompaniments
chopped coriander
chopped shallots
chopped ginger
chopped chilli
soy sauce
fish sauce
Kimchi is also good with it.

I make up a sauce of soy and fish sauce, chopped chilli and garlic - this way if you want a little chilli, you can just spoon the sauce without the chilli but it will still have the chilli flavour. My brother does white vinegar, which some chilli and coriander chopped into it.

Serve in a bowl with the egg on top and then add your accompaniments. 

*******
We will have bones and bone broth at the coming markets this weekend - 18th and 19th March, Yeppoon and Rockhampton. 



3 comments:

  1. Hi Lucy, Snap!! I made bone broth this week too... and wrote about it. It must be the hint of autumn in the air. Have just listened to your interview with Gavin, from "The greening of Gavin" and can honestly say it was the best half hour of interest as I was nodding all the way through. You do and make all of the things that I do, and is so refreshing to hear you speak about it, especially your hand milking of four cows!!! Now that is way beyond my comprehension, as I'm no hand milker. You must have very strong and fit hands. . I'm a huge fan of Joel Salatin too, and his farming methods, which we follow here on our very small patch. You would know Shane Joyce from Dukes Plains near Theodore, now living at Kilkivan, another great bio-dynamics mentor for us. We visited your area a couple of years ago when up there at Dukes Plain, and all I want to do is get back up there for another visit. Crikey, we think we live in the bush here but, you guys are the real-deal farmers and I take my hat off to you. I'm interested in your feta recipe that you mentioned in the interview. Any chance of writing a blog about it? When you get a spare minute, although God knows when you would ever find one of those. ;) I just love reading about what you do there on your property, as I can picture it in my mind's eye as similar to Dukes with their wwoofers, all the cooking involved, the farming work etc. Cheers!

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    1. Hi Sally
      I've tried to reply to your lovely comment previously, but couldn't remember my password - If you get to read this, it means my computer has remembered it! We know Shane well and have been to Dukes Plains a few times - it is a beautiful property and amazing what he's done with it. We have a bit further to go and need to do more with biodynamics - we got into it a bit a few years ago, but have had trouble finding the time the last couple of years. We started collecting horns last year and will hopefully do a burial this year and that should then get us motivated. My feta recipe is on the recipe tab of my healthy farming blog, so I'll put a link here, but you'll need to scroll down a bit for it - under the baked beans.http://healthyfarminghealthyfood.blogspot.com.au/p/recipes.html

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  2. Oooh that recipe page is wonderful Lucy. Your feta recipe is like Persian Feta and is so soft and smooth. I'll be making that for a change of my usual one. The baked beans will be made too. Haven't made them for ages, you know how recipes just get forgotten about, and then something crops up that reminds us again of how much we loved them. I love the look of your recipe and will probably cook them in the pressure cooker. It's often times difficult to maintain the motivation with bio-dynamics, and we've found that getting together with our BD friends for an open day occasionally (usually here) gets us all powered up again. But now, after a few years, we can notice the difference in our soil and plants. That's motivation enough.

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