Bone Broth is Beautiful

How genuine bone broth can support good health and turn you onto a wonderful cook

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My mother was from the South and, true to southern culinary tradition, she frequently made chicken broth—either from a whole chicken or with chicken necks and backs. The broth went into chicken gravy and delicious, satisfying soups. She told us that chicken broth would give you beautiful skin and indeed, her skin was wrinkle-free, even in old age. That was a bit of folk wisdom that she shared.

The other bit of folk wisdom is one we are familiar with: “Chicken soup for the soul,” chicken soup for lifting our mood and making us feel mellow and content. There’s also the notion that we should drink chicken broth when we are sick, that a mug of warm broth will help us get over a cold or the flu.

It turns out there are scientific explanations for all these beliefs!

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I like to think of broth made from the bones of chicken, duck, beef, veal, or pork as melted collagen, collagen that nourishes our own collagen—not only the collagen that creates the framework for our bones, tendons, and ligaments, but also collagen in our skin, the lining of the intestinal tract, fascia, and other connective tissue. In fact, collagen is the most prevalent type of protein in the body, comprising 30 percent of total proteins.

Collagen is comprised of four principal amino acids: Proline, glycine, glutamine, and alanine. These are nonessential amino acids, meaning that the body can make them. However, under many conditions, including periods of rapid growth, healing, and just getting older, it’s helpful to the body to get them ready-made as we do in a collagen-rich bone broth.

These amino acids have many roles in the body. Proline, for example, helps build healthy cartilage and supports wound healing, antioxidative reactions, and immune responses—think chicken soup for colds and flu.

Glycine is the chief component of collagen and the main amino acid your body uses to make proteins. It contributes to muscle health, skin, and intestinal health has a calming effect on the brain, and improves cognition.

Animal studies indicate that glycine is involved in the regulation of dopamine, a feel-good chemical—think chicken soup for the soul. Glycine supports the production of glutathione—your body’s main antioxidant and a compound involved in the detoxification of heavy metals and environmental toxins—think chicken broth for overall health.

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Glutamine, the most abundant free amino acid in the human body, is key to a healthy intestinal tract. I’ve heard from many who suffer from intestinal diseases like IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) or Crohn’s that consuming broth gives relief.

Glutamine plays an important role in the central nervous system and helps the body form important neurotransmitters, including one called GABA, which relieves anxiety and enables the body and mind to relax and fall asleep—digestive support and relief of anxiety is more chicken soup for the soul!

Finally, there’s alanine, which is a source of energy for muscles and the nervous system. Alanine strengthens the immune system and helps the body use sugars—and therefore shows promise in the treatment of diabetes.

For the health of our connective tissue, our intestinal tract, our skin, our brains, and our nervous system, it makes sense to include collagen-rich bone broth in our diet—especially in gravies and sauces that we put on meat. In fact, it is much healthier to eat our meat with a glycine-rich gravy or sauce than to eat it dry, because the glycine in bone broth helps mitigate potential problems with too much methionine in muscle meat.

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How do we know when the broth we make is collagen rich? When it turns to jelly in the refrigerator. (Most commercial brands in aseptic packaging do not gel at all!)

To make a collagen-rich chicken broth, fill a slow cooker with chicken bones—these can be leftover bones kept from chicken you have prepared previously—my freezer is full of scary-looking bags of chicken bones—or purchased necks and backs. If you can obtain some chicken feet and heads (often available from a local farmer raising poultry on pasture), do include these—there is a lot of collagen in these neglected parts of the bird.

These bones should fill the slow cooker pot. Add one red onion, cut in half. (Don’t peel the onion, the peel adds color to the broth.) For seasonings, I add a tablespoon of peppercorns and two or three bay leaves—but you can get creative with the herbs you add.

Fill the pot with filtered water plus a half cup of vinegar, cover, and cook overnight on low. Next morning, ladle out the broth through a fine-mesh strainer into glass containers—I like to use Pyrex pitchers—and refrigerate. With any luck, your chicken broth will gel nicely once chilled. It will keep for several days in the fridge, and several months or even years in the freezer.

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Once you have your broth on hand, you can be a creative cook. For example, if you bake a chicken, once you remove the bird from the baking pan, you can make gravy by stirring a little unbleached flour into the drippings and then whisking in some warmed chicken broth. If the gravy is too thick, add more broth or some water—if it is too thin, boil down until it thickens. Always add salt at the end or the gravy may end up too salty.

For a gourmet reduction sauce, deglaze the drippings with white wine or brandy (or both), add several cups of broth and some cream or crème fraiche. Reduce by boiling until the sauce thickens. Add salt at the very end. Carve the chicken, place chicken parts on individual plates, and spoon the sauce over the pieces. You will get raves for this dish!

You can make a second batch of broth with the same bones—it won’t gel as well as the first batch but is fine to use in soups. Just fill the pot with water plus a half cup of vinegar again and cook on low overnight. Remove the bones with a slotted spoon—they will be soft by this point and safe to give to your dog—and ladle or pour the broth through a fine-mesh strainer into a soup pot.

Add the bits of chicken picked off the bones, plus rice or noodles, and voila! Chicken rice or chicken noodle soup. Add a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of black beans, a package of frozen corn, and a couple of tablespoons of chili powder and you have a delicious southwest chicken soup.

Notice that I am not giving exact recipes here—just guidelines. Once you have real bone broth and understand the basics of making gravy, sauce, or soup, you can create wonderful meals without ever looking at a recipe book!