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Bone broth is always wildly popular through the winter in real food circles. It’s an awesome, nutrient-dense food full of wonderful gelatin and minerals. If you do it right, you can pull many minerals out of the bones to the point that the bones will soften and easily snap under a little pressure. That’s a sure sign that mineral migration has happened.
Bone broth is a ‘found food’ for many people, meaning it can be made out of scraps instead of purchased ingredients, making it highly economical during a time period where money is tight for most folks. But I often see new real foodies not maximizing the nutritional punch and spending too much money on stock making. Here are the five biggest mistakes you might be making with your bone broth.
Not Re-Using Bones
With chicken and beef bones, you should make at least two batches of stock out of each set of bones. Yes, it is true that the second round won’t be as rich, but it will contain good nutrition and flavor. To help with the body, I go ahead and put fresh chicken feet into the second batch.
Use the second round of stock by mixing it with the first and cooking it down, or you can use it for cooking things like taco meat, rice and other dishes where the stock is absorbed instead of being a feature of the meal, as it is with soup. It’s a win-win- you get more nutrition into your meals for little to no additional expense.
Throwing Away Bones
Never, ever put a bone in the garbage until it’s been run through your stockpot twice. It’s a waste. Salvage every bone and pop it into the freezer until it’s time to make stock, if you don’t have enough on hand today to do it.
I know someone will ask, ‘What if someone ate off of it?’ Personally, since I know those bones are going into a pot that will be hot enough to kill off any germs immediately after the meal is over, I don’t worry about it. Of course, we do eat with forks and knives at the table. But if you’re really squicked out about any possible germs, you can de-bone the chicken before serving it. Take the meat and skin to the table and leave the bones in the kitchen so you can make stock. As a bonus, your kids will likely eat faster, too, since they don’t have to debone their meat!
No Vinegar Soak
A vinegar pre-soak before applying heat ensures that minerals will be pulled out of the bones and into the stock. If you skip it, you must cook the stock for much longer before you can get the same effect. Always soak cold bones with vinegar before you apply any heat. If the bones are hot, the pores are closed and the vinegar can’t get in to work its magic. Use cold bones and soak with 2 Tbs vinegar to 1 gallon of water for chicken or a half-cup vinegar to one gallon for beef for one hour before you turn on the heat.
Throwing Out Veggies
The little ends of onions, little bits of the top and bottom of a carrot and the leaves and heart of celery can all be scrubbed, trimmed and used in stock instead of using whole onions, carrots and celery that could otherwise be used for cooking. These little bits of waste can save you money and cut down on your need to run to the grocery store.
I throw my odds and ends into a zip-top bag in my kitchen freezer and pull them out when it’s time to make stock. It saves me time chopping and it saves money by not using whole vegetables that I could otherwise feed to my kids. It’s a win-win!
No Feet
Chicken feet makes a rich, flavorful stock. Many real foodies find feets, beaks and other odd bits scary. If little claws sticking out of the pot bother you, simply slide the feet into the chicken carcasses’ cavity and put the carcass into a narrow stock-pot neck-up so the feet are trapped inside the chicken, under the water line. I promise you, you will never find so rich of a stock from bones alone. Feet give the stock lots of gelatin, and gelatin is responsible for mouth-feel and body in a good stock. Try it once and you won’t go back to feetless stock again. 🙂
You can see my full chicken stock recipe or my full beef stock recipe to learn how to soak the bones, add the veggies and make beautiful, flavorful bone broth full of nutrition.
Want to learn more? Check out the related posts below from our Bone Broth Marathon last Winter. You can also see our follow-up post, Five More Bone Broth Mistakes You Might Be Making.
I'm 
Woo Hoo – not making any of these mistakes 🙂
Questions:
1. Can you do the cold water in an acid soak longer than an hour or two? I usually soak overnight.
2. I like to use white wine for my acid, and I use a good deal more than a tbsp or two – generally I use a half cup to a cup. Do you think this is adequate?
Jill, I don’t like to soak longer than an hour or two because meat can harbor bacteria that will multiply when the temperature is between 40 and 140 degrees. The pH of white vinegar is 5 and the pH of white wine is around 3, so I believe it should work.
Haha I love those feet in the chicken broth. It’s kind of creepy, but I’m kind of proud of myself for not being squeamish about it.
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Go girl 😉
I’m not skeeved by the feet I just can’t seem to find them, even when I buy chickens from the farm, maybe I have to ask if they’ll leave them on?
Lorie, ask the farmer what they do with the feet. They might be throwing them away. If so, you can offer to buy all of the feet they have available from processing!
Thank you for these tips! I always added vinegar but didn’t understand what it was doing and I think I forgot it last time. It wasn’t as flavorful as usual and now it makes sense. I usually make stock with a whole chicken but have been thinking of baking the chicken first, and then making the stock with the bones and saved juices. Will this be as nutritious? I am not crazy about the texture of the chicken (even in tacos) after I make stock and I’m looking for a better way to utilize the meat.
Thank You!
Margaret, I rarely use raw chicken for stock making. I usually roast a whole chicken, we eat the meat at dinner, then I pick off the remaining meat and set it aside for another meal and use the carcass for stock. I believe leaving the meat in is largely a waste as little nutrition comes out of the meat and into the liquid. If you want to use raw chicken, remove it after 30 or so minutes of boiling and take the meat off the bones and return the bones to the liquid.
I raise my own chickens and I’m still weird about putting the feet into stock. Does the vinegar soak change the flavor, I’d just been adding lemon juice to the water in the beginning and make it in the crockpot and seem to get lots of gelling action when I refrigerate. Maybe my mean old roosters are just full of gelatin?
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Melody, old roosters are wonderfully full of gelatin. The vinegar soak does not change the flavor, there’s relatively little vinegar there since you only use 2 Tbs per gallon of water for chicken.
Great tips — I will implement them all!!!
Thanks for sharing! I’ve been trying to make my own broth, but don’t feel like I’ve mastered it. You mentioned a few things that are a bit different than my current method, so I hope to try them soon and see if I get better results.
I haven’t been adding vinegar because I have a stainless steel stock pot and I was worried it might leach metal from the pot into my stock. Is this a valid concern, or is the acid maybe dilute enough that it’s not likely to be a problem? (We’ve been dealing with a lot of heavy metal toxicity in our family, along with the inability to detox well.)
No worries about stainless leeching. It’s aluminum you have to worry about leeching. Anything even slightly acidic will pull aluminum into the food.
Hugs for the heavy metal issues. I’ve been there and I know how tough it is. I’m also working on my detox pathways, it’s a continual process for me.
I’m beginning to suspect we have issues with one of the MTHFR mutations, but I’m not ready to go there yet, and we don’t have the money for testing!
GAPS is doing a lot for us, as well as having switched to Pickl-Its for fermentation, for which I have you to thank! 🙂
((hugs)) Hang in there. The blogs Loving our Guts and GAPS Diet Journey both have good info on MTHFR. It’s something I want to look into for myself, as well, when I get time.
Thanks for the tips! 🙂 And you hang in there, too!
Just found this post. Did you ever get tested? I’ve just found out I have the MTHFR defect and it seems to have a lot of implications!
Thanks for this great post!
If I’m using frozen bones, is it recommended that I thaw them out before starting a vinegar soak, or can I do a vinegar soak with the frozen bones?
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Vanessa, if they’re frozen, I just pop them in with the vinegar and let them soak for 2-3 hours. You don’t want the bones to be between 40-140 for four or more hours, so soaking for that long gives them thawing and soaking time without them being in the danger zone for too long.
I have to disagree with you on the veggies. It’s like wine, if you won’t drink it,don’t cook with it. If you won’t eat those ends and tips,don’t use it in your broth. There is a reason you are cutting them off in the 1st place.
Well, bones are normally considered waste, and I wouldn’t eat them, but they do make excellent broth! Celery leaves are a common ingredient as well, nothing wrong with eating them. Carrot tips and tops are edible, they just aren’t convenient to peel, so most people cut them off.
What slow cooker is the best to use?!
Tracy, we discuss slow cookers, the lead issue and what types we personally use in this podcast- http://www.cookingTF.com/the-living-kitchen-podcast-27-what-a-crock-cooking-with-crock-pots/
Since the bones get all crumbly, I put them into my compost to add minerals there. No waste at all!!
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When my friends and I first started making bone broth years ago using vinegar and stainless steel pots one of the gals was found to have high levels of unexplained nickel in her system. Could that be from the broth? Since then I have
used a porcelain canning pot, but would sometimes like to use stainless due to size. What do you think?
Cheryl, if you have a poor quality stainless steel pot, I believe that nickel will leech into all foods cooked in it, not just stock. I’ll round up the information about that and include it in a future post.
With regard to chicken feet… I have a big bag of them that still have the yellow skin and claws and all that. is it necessary to blanch and peel them and declaw them? Or can I just throw them in as is? Also, I am ashamed to say, they have been in my freezer for a couple of years (time flies when you’re having babies!)… still OK to use?
Sarah, you don’t have to declaw them. They should have been peeled before sale, with the possible exception if you bought directly from the farmer, but even then it was likely done. If they’re two years old, they might be freezer burned. I’d take some out and thaw them and look and smell for freezer burn before using.