Herbal bone broth

There is nothing better than herbal bone broth on cold days! (You can also leave the bones out for a veggie version, of course!)

I love making a big batch and keeping it in the fridge. After my morning tea, I heat up a cup of broth, add sea salt, and sip it through the morning. My whole body relaxes as the nutrients pour in. I find it extremely grounding.

You can also use broth to add nutrients and depth of flavor to anything else you are cooking, for example, as a base for soups, rice, beans, or lentils.

One easy idea is to save your kitchen scraps in a bag in the freezer. This is a great plan for less waste and it makes a fantastic addition to broth. If you don’t have a kitchen scrap bag ready, add veggies such as: onions, garlic, carrots, celery, mushrooms, beets, and really almost anything else.

For the bones you can cook a whole chicken, buy a rotisserie chicken, eat the meat, and use the leftover bones. Or, even easier in my opinion, just go to your local health food store or butcher and ask for organic chicken bones or frames. (These are usually under $2 and are the basis for a great broth. You can also use fish or beef bones.) Chicken is my favorite, but you can use any kind of bones, including fish!

If you have a health condition, are on medications, pregnant, or breastfeeding please do your due diligence to make sure all the herbs that you use are safe for you.

💚 Full recipe:

Please note: if all of these herbs are too much to buy at once — no worries at all — start with some and add more over time. Starting with bones, kitchen garden herbs, medicinal mushrooms, seaweed, and veggies would be a great start…. but here is the full recipe with a word of explanation for each, although all the herbs do so much more than one thing.)

Ingredients:

• 1 handful of kitchen garden herbs *ex: rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, etc… (immunity, flavor)

• 1 tablespoon astragalus root (Astragalus membranaceus) (immunity)

• 1 tablespoon burdock root (Arctium lappa) (cleanse)

• 1 tablespoon dandelion root (Taraxacum officinale) (cleanse)

• 1 tablespoon horsetail (Equisetum arvense) (bone, hair, nail support)

• 1 tablespoon nettle (Urtica dioica) (minerals)

• 1 tablespoon elderberry (Sambucus nigra) (immunity)

• 1 tablespoon rose hips (Rosa spp.) (vit C to aid absorption)

• 1 tablespoon barberry (Berberis vulgaris) or Oregon grape root (Mahonia aquifolium) (antimicrobial)

• 2 tablespoons seaweed (nutritive) *ex: kombu, nori, wakambe, dulse, etc…

• 1 handful of medicinal mushrooms (nutritive) *ex: reishi, lion’s mane, shitake, etc…

• 1 splash of apple cider vinegar (with the mother)

• 1 rough chopped onion – you can include the skin (immunity)

• 1 rough chopped head of garlic – you can include the skin (immunity)
  
• 1 tablespoon ginger and turmeric (I add fresh, but dried is good too)

• veggie scraps (or your choice of veggies) (nutritive)

• bones of your choice

Instructions:

Add all the ingredients to a pot with enough water to cover them well, plus a couple inches. Bring to a boil, then turn down to low and simmer. Leave the pot uncovered so that the water reduces and the broth becomes more dense with nutrients as time goes on. (You can add water as it is simmering if you need to.)

I like to buy a whole organic chicken + salt and simmer it with the herbs for one hour. I then take the whole chicken out, clean all the meat off for use in cooking, and then return the bones to the pot for 3+ more hours.

You can also ask butchers if they have organic bones available – often these are just around $2-3 and still add so much nutrition to your broth. You can use any kind of bones for this  (including fish.)

After 4+ hours, strain the solids out of the mixture. The broth can be salted to taste and enjoyed by itself, as a base for soups, or instead of water when you make rice, beans, lentils, etc… It will add a huge boost of nutrition to all meals prepared with it.

My favorite way to have broth is to sit quietly with it in meditation and imagine all of the nutrients soaking into my body as I sip it. (You can really feel it!) If I do this when I have “food noise” or cravings, it’s transformational.

If you get a chance to make it, let me know how it goes!! 💚

Here are some more herb ideas. There are some pictured here that aren’t in the main recipe above — because I throw all kinds of things in depending on what I have. 🙂