Bone Broth Quick and Easy

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Few things pack more nutrition than homemade bone broth.

Good news – you no longer need to simmer your bones for days to yield a healthy, delicious broth. This pressure cooking method will lock in more vitamins and do it in a fraction of the time!

Bone Broth

Pressure Cooker Chicken Bone Broth Recipe

Adjustments for other types of meat and bones: Fish and chicken bones are small and thin so the cooking time is pretty short. If you’re cooking big beef bones, joints, etc., just double the cooking time. (You can use 4-6 lbs. of beef and pork bones.)

What you’ll need:

  • 1 pressure cooker (we use the 9.5 diameter BRK Pressure Cooker – to buy click here).

If you don’t have a pressure cooker you’ll have to simmer the bones between 12 and 72 hours, which is one major reason we recommend pressure cooking.

Ingredients:

  • 3 onions, cut into quarters
  • 2 carrots, cut into quarters
  • 2 celery stalks, cut into quarters
  • 1 pasture-raised chicken carcass (everything including the neck, giblets, skin – even the head and feet if you can get them)
  • 1 gallon filtered water (enough to cover everything but not more than â…” the capacity of the pressure cooker)
  • 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar (find ACV here)
  • ¼ cup fish sauce (find fish sauce here)

Be creative here and add other components you love, like bay leaves, parsley, garlic, etc.

Bone Broth 2

Directions:

  1. Place all ingredients in pressure cooker, seal lid, and place on high heat.
  2. Once you hit high pressure (adjust accordingly for altitude), lower heat as low as you can while still maintaining high pressure and cook for 45 minutes.
  3. After cooking time expires, turn burner off and allow pressure to get down to zero while lid remains on the pressure cooker.
  4. Once depressurized, take off lid, skim off the scum, and strain broth.

That’s all there is to it!

Now just refrigerate, freeze, or can, and enjoy. If refrigerating the broth, be sure to use it up within a week or two.

Benefits of Bone Broth

I won’t reinvent the wheel here since Sally Fallon and Mark Sisson already expounded the many benefits bone broth delivers. Suffice to say it’s a powerful superfood that heals and strengthens our teeth, bones, joints, and helps bolsters our immune system.

You can credit traditional bone broth for the healing reputation of chicken noodle soup. Most modern versions of this therapeutic classic fall far short because they replace bone broth with sodium and color, so it looks like chicken soup, and tastes somewhat like chicken soup, but it’s NOT real chicken soup. Real, healthy, nourishing, chicken noodle soup can only be realized when built on the foundation of old-world bone broth recipes like one above.

Invest in Pressure Cookers and Canners

A common myth of pressure cooking is that it kills the nutrients in food. The truth is, pressure cooking at higher temperatures for shorter times retains more vitamins than boiling, steaming, and roasting. So pressure cook your food with confidence (and speed)!

For cooking we use and recommend BRK Pressure Cookers because they’re stainless steel. (To buy click here.)

For pressure canning we use and recommend the All American 21½ quart 921 model. (We don’t cook in it because it’s aluminum, but it’s great for canning – the aluminum does NOT leach through glass jars.)

Pasture Raised Bones Only

Like any animal product, be sure your bones are from healthy, pasture-raised animals – it makes all the difference.

If you start with a healthy animal, you’ll yield healthy broth. If you don’t, you won’t. Period.

Cook Bones Several Times

You should be able to run the bones through several times before pulling all the nutrients out. Sometimes the latter batches are even better since it can take awhile to get to the real good stuff, the marrow. We typically cook our bones two or three times, depending on how they look afterward. If they’re mush we’re done, if they’re in tact we’ll typically run them through another time.

Preserve Your Broth

Keep some in the fridge and freeze or can the rest. We’re big fans of pressure canning, since it only takes 25 minutes to can seven quarts in our All American Pressure Canner. How you preserve it isn’t as important as just doing it. If canning intimidates you then just freeze it. But since this is DIY Natural, we encourage you to invest in the new skill; you’ll be forever thankful you did.

Be Creative with Your Broth

Sure, the obvious uses are soups and the like, but be creative and use it in place of water when cooking. Drink a warm mug of bone broth every day in place of coffee. Cook your pasta in bone broth instead of water. As you can see, there are many yummy possibilities. (No time for making your own broth? Find real bone broth here.)

In addition to the uses we’ve mentioned here, the book Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World, will give you a million more ideas on how to use your broth – for healing sickness, preventing illness, and just enjoying as a food. You can find the book here.

Share your creative broth experiences with the community below!

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About Matt Jabs

Matt loves to inspire others to save money and live more sustainably. He is passionate about eating local, living simply, and doing more things himself. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Comments

  1. Avatar photoEmily says

    Hi there! My goal is for my husband and I to drink a cup of broth a day. The only problem is we don’t eat enough chicken meat to keep up with our broth needs. I asked at whole foods today (which only sells free range not pasture raised chickens at least where I live) and they do not sell any part of the chicken carcass without meat. I was able to get some feet from a farmer this month but don’t know if feet are really enough to make a good broth. If I can continue to get feet should I make broth with feet only? If I can’t get feet next month- any recommendations for getting pasture raised chicken bones (aside from the farmers market which is how we got the feet!)?

    • Avatar photoMatt Jabs says

      Check and see if there is a butcher in town that sells grass-fed chicken backs (we have one). Otherwise I would try contacting the pasture-raised chicken farmers in your area to ask if you can get them direct – I’m sure they have some remains.

  2. Avatar photoLaura says

    When you say “run the bones through several times “, what do you mean? Do you freeze them and make another batch later or what? Thanks!

  3. Avatar photoCheryl says

    I make homemade soups and broth already, and have a question. Are you using a chicken carcass with all of the meat removed, or a cut up whole chicken that has not been cooked yet? Thank-you!

  4. Avatar photoElisa Rodriguez says

    Great ideas, love this use of ice cube trays! Any concern for a lack of nutrients when the cubes are exposed to the air for a prolonged period of time, or do you assume the freezing preserves the contents?

    • Avatar photoMatt Jabs says

      I wouldn’t worry about that. We freeze our raw milk (because we have to drive 60 miles to pick it up) and it turns out great, I’m sure broth would too.

    • Avatar photoMarilyn says

      The bone broth ice cubes are put in freezer proof bags or containers so there is no exposure to the air. Ours are used fairly quickly so we don’t have to worry about a prolonged period of time.

  5. Avatar photoMarilyn says

    I pour some of my chicken broth in my ice cube trays and put them in a bag and keep in the freezer and any time I’m making gravy, sauces, or want to season a dish I get out a couple of cubes and throw them in the pan. Works great. Also, I cook my potatoes in chicken broth instead of water and there is no need for butter. Everyone wants to know how I made my mashed potatoes. I use it in other veggies as well. After you do this a couple of times you will wonder how you got along without it before.

    • Avatar photoMatt Jabs says

      Great idea w/the potatoes, I just did it with our pasta two nights back. Even after using it to cook the pasta I put it back in the fridge and plan to use it again for something else. Awesome stuff.

  6. Avatar photoShannon says

    Perfect timing! Picking up my next cow pooling on Saturday, and I will be getting a few packages of beef bones! I was just about to look up tips on making my broth.

  7. Avatar photoMichelle Enzenroth says

    I am not ready to invest in a pressure cooker right now, could I still make the broth in a slow cooker/crockpot? I am sure I would have to cook longer on high or low? Any advice appreciated. I would like to try this. Thanks!

  8. Avatar photoMatt Jabs says

    To all who asked, the fish sauce is the secret ingredient. It’s added to create a richer flavor profile, and it works, trust me! Blessings.

  9. Avatar photoElisa Rodriguez says

    Thanks for another useful article!

    I’ve been using bone broth to heal my gut, but every time I freeze it – the jars crack. I cool it in the fridge first and leave space at the top to anticipate expansion. Any ideas? Is this the purpose of the All American Pressure Canner? Thanks for your time and feedback!

  10. Avatar photoLorene says

    I too am wondering what the benefit of the fish sauce is? My husband and I are not into “fishy” tasting fish or anything. What IS the benefit?

  11. Avatar photoJoy says

    I have never tried to make my bone broth in the pressure cooker! Great idea! One question, do you add fish sauce just for the flavor? Do you add it to beef broth, also? I have never added this to mine either.

    • Avatar photoMary-Margaret says

      I began canning about two years ago and can attest to investing in the skill! I was a little nervous at first–making food shelf safe for a year or more? I didn’t want to ruin a bunch of good food, or kill anyone who eats at my home! :o) But it’s actually quite simple. Be mindful of recipes, especially if you’re doing a water boil bath rather than a pressure cooker. It is a science, and the correct chemistry needs to be reached to maintain food safety. But it’s such a wonderful hobby to pick up!