Posted on June 17, 2021 by Kate Halsall

Happy Friday! And on Fridays we do food. Yum! I admit that I haven’t been that creative in the kitchen recently but thought I could share with you some of the things I have been eating. What might be a big surprise to you is that I have started eating meat again. It started with bone broth for gut health and has expanded from there for many reasons. It’s been bit of a strange journey eating meat again with all the environmental/health/ethical/spiritual factors involved. But overall, I would say that my health and body has benefited from it.

So, I might as well tell you how I’ve been making my bone broth. I only make beef or chicken broth. The great thing is our local butcher gives beef bones for free, or we buy marrow bones from Waitrose (v cheap). You can consume super nutritious food for free! Alternatively, I get a whole chicken and roast it and use the carcass. We use a pressure cooker at home so this is what I suggest, you can do a slow cook process but it takes aaaaages.

Beef:

Season bones with salt and pepper and roast in the oven for 10-15min. Place bones in the pressure cooker, cover with water and a tablespoon apple cider vinegar. Once the cooker is at pressure, lower heat and cook for 2 hours. (that’s the hardcore au naturel version). To make it taste a bit yummier I like to chuck in rough chopped onion, carrot, celery, ginger, turmeric, more pepper and a couple of bay leaves. Once cooked, strain and leave to cool before refrigerating. A good broth will be very gelatinous after it has been cooled (cue gut healing glutamine and skin friendly collagen). You can remove and discard the fat from the top or if you can be bothered you can make beef tallow. I couldn’t be bothered, but if you’re following a ketogenic diet this could be beneficial for you to consume (fat or tallow).

Chicken:

Roast the chicken and leave to rest (check cooking times, depending on bird size). Pick off all the meat. All I do is put the carcass in the pressure cooker, cover with water, salt and pepper and cook for 1-hour 20min. Strain and serve. I sometimes use the meat in the broth too, adding after straining. I blitz it a bit with the hand blender to make it less chunky. Mushrooms are a good addition too.

Benefits of bone broth:

  • Healthy bones, joints and cartilage.
  • Anti-inflammatory.
  • Gut health.

So, there you have it. A cheap way to get you a powerhouse of nutrients in. As always, tag us in your foodie photos @motive8_north

Emily x