Visited my local butcher a couple of days ago. Got a lot of lamb bones and a few beef bones. Added veggies and a generous splash of wine vinegar. Cooked for around 36 hours. The lamb bones were soft to the point I could literally eat them. I haven't binned most of them yet, because I may yet eat them.
You can see the broth is literally as thick from the fridge as jelly/jello. It's full of collagen/gelatine. Maybe it will help me sleep!
You can also see my weird finger. Childhood eczema leaves it mark.
Picture is of the broth, covered in a layer of lamb tallow, which I plan to render to replace the beef tallow I feed to a heron today.
Yeah, that's true. I feed beef tallow to a heron today. I am not sure heron should eat beef tallow, but it loved it.
ChubbieChops OilpainterUS
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Aren't you a darling, CC. :). I still feel that I was dipped in a vat of boiling water. I am so inflamed and am trying to reduce the nerve pain. But, that 200# door that crushed me in that trauma event didn't kill me. 😅
Overall, I am very grateful for good news I received of a mass on my pancreas - it's benign! I had ovarian cancer at age 17 and know just how precious every day is. This was just another reminder that we only have today and to rejoice in all our blessings.
Your post, Subtle_badgers and Lucy's posts...really sweet and uplifting. I am so grateful for you all.
Sorry to hijack this wonderful thread, Subtle_badger! Let's talk about broth! I actually roasted my turkey carcass this week and now have an amazing pot of natural collagen!
Apparently the standing advice for feeding birds in winter is to leave them a ball of lard (I suppose on the basis that insectivores eat mainly fat and protein). So sounds like you're doing the right thing!
What are you going to do with the broth? Drink it as-is?
I am not sure what I will do with this broth. It's spectacular, but it tastes pretty gamey. I think I will use it to make soup.
Oo, cauliflower soup for dinner!
As for feeding the birds, swans, seagulls and heron liked the fat. The ducks didn't enjoy it, but chowed down on the corn I found in the back of my freezer.
Yup, I did my research. Here's what I wrote when I previously had excess fat:
Can we put these guys in charge of Public Health England?
"Polyunsaturated margarines or vegetable oils
These are unsuitable for birds. Unlike humans, birds need high levels of saturated fat, such as raw suet and lard. They need the high energy content to keep warm in the worst of the winter weather, since their body reserves are quickly used up, particularly on cold winter nights. "
" Bread does not contain the necessary protein and fat birds need from their diet, and so it can act as an empty filler. Although bread isn't harmful to birds, try not to offer it in large quantities, since its nutritional value is relatively low. "
Wow, that looks fabulous! Lucky heron!! I still haven't made any since I last stocked up at my butcher and forgot to ask for bones. And no! I am not stockpiling because of the dreaded C word - I just have quite a long drive to my butcher so I do a bulk buy every couple of weeks
That's interesting information about the birds, SB, thank you for sharing that. I'll be mindful for next winter up north. Perhaps I could make some things with leftovers and freeze them until winter. Love to have birds around the house.
My turkey broth turned out fabulously well! It was enough to make a turkey stew and a white bean turkey chili type stew with even some stick leftover.
Can you explain to me the amount of items you put in your slow cooker to make this please. Do you need to cover it all with water. I’m not a person that usually cooks lol but I have a slow cooker but only used it a few times for stew. I’m trying Keto and heard bone broth is good but didn’t know how to do it until I saw your post. My slow cooker is a 3 litre capacity. Is the cologne good for inflammation and joints etc as well. Also how is the best way to use it I’ve seen it suggested as a drink in hot water. Any advise would be welcome. I’m coping with basic Keto I think but still learning since 3rd feb.
I am not an expert on this, I basically read a few recipes online and came up a technique that seems to work.
I didn't blanch the bones. Blanching is preboiling and then throwing that water away, that seemed a waste as the bones had a lot of meat on them, so even 20 minutes boiling will extract a lot of flavour to tip down the drain. Maybe next time I will separate the meaty bones and boil the others. Up to you: bonappetit.com/test-kitchen...
So that's what I didn't do, now what I did.
Roasted the bones for about an hour in a nice hot oven. That's to improve the flavour, nothing to do with nutrition.
Put them in a stockpot (I don't have a slow cooker) with onion, garlic and celery bits, handful of sea salt, dozen or so peppercorns, 2 bay leaves, mixed herbs from cupboard and a generous splash of vinegar then covered it with cold water. Oh, in a slowcooker you might want to use boiling water to get it started. You need to cover it, because anything out of the water will not contribute. Bring it to a simmer, and then turn it down an leave it. Mine stayed on for 36 hours because I started it one evening and the next evening I wanted to go to bed, and didn't want to leave it slowly cooling. After 36 hours, the lamb bones were soft enough to eat - I ate one, that how I know - so most of their goodness was now in the liquid. I scooped out the solid matter with a slotted spoon, then sieved it through a wire strainer. You could do that a second time with a cloth or kitchen paper lining if you wanted it more refined.
Let it cool a bit, then get it into your fridge. Or you could put it on the stove to boil first so it becomes more concentrated. When it's cold, the fat will form on the surface. You scrape it off then refine it to be tallow or discard it, you can keep it with the broth and include some everytime you use it.
You need to use it within 4 or 5 days, or it might go off. It freezers well, in plastic bags, ice cube trays or any suitable container.
I don't mean eating the marrow, I mean eating a whole bone, like it was a Twix bar. I think the vinegar leaches the minerals from the bones. I could have literally eaten every bit of ovine material I strained out. Bovine was more solid.
Herons are endemic here. Apparently the population rebounded when the river got infested with Chinese mitten crabs, the upside to a small environmental disaster. I didn't refine the lamb tallow, so I may have more fat to feed one. I will bring a camera if I do.
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