I finished with the turkey today. We have some meat in a container for making sandwiches with, and I took the bones out and started them in the slow cooker yesterday and left them overnight. This morning, I took the bones out and added some carrots, celery, onions, and garlic and seasonings. I added just a little bit of rice to thicken the soup, and it is cooking for our main meal today. I still want to find some kind of meat that has more collagen in it, like knuckle bones, so I might have to go to Whole Foods and see what they have, because walmart just doesn’t seem to have anything like that. News flash ! Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet book is on sale today for just $3.99, and it is the newer and updated version. I just bought the kindle book and am going to start reading it and learning more about making the healthiest bone broth. https://www.amazon.com/Kellyanns-Bone-Broth-Diet-Inches-ebook/dp/
I still had some of the neck bones that I used to make bone broth before; so I started those in the slow cooker last night, and left them on low all night. Now, I am ready to chop some veggies and add that and let it simmer until this afternoon. The bone broth has the glucosamine and chondroitin that people take for joint pain, plus it has lots of collagen and gelatin that helps re-build cartilage and make nice skin and hair. It helps with bone density, too, which is important for us older people, so we don’t fall and break something. We are having this cold weather, so now is the perfect time to have a big pot of bone broth and vegetable soup. I started reading the book about bone broth, and Dr. Kellyann has a lot of different ways to add things to the broth for different flavors.
Kelly Ann says to try the bone broth for 21 days, and you will feel and look years younger. I don’t know that this will work for me at my age, but even feeling better is fine with me. I actually think that I am already feeling more energetic. Last night, went to bed at the usual time, and sleepy; but then my brain jumped out of park and into high gear, and before i knew it, I was (mentally) re-arranging cupboards and changing things around in the house. I finally had to tell my mind that we were NOT going to start doing that stuff in the middle of the night, and please shut down and go to sleep. So, here I am……. had a morning cup of coffee, now having my breakfast of hot soupy bone broth, and 2 quarts in the fridge for the next couple of days. Then it is back to work in the kitchen, making things easier to find, and getting rid of stuff I don’t need (or is too old to use and has been hiding out of sight in the top shelf of the cupboard). When I told Mr. Bobby about all my housework plans, he remembered that he needed to be outside and cut down the banana tree and the cannas, since they are all frozen and dead now, with the cold weather. But he did promise to help me with the stuff I can’’t reach. (He knows there is eggnog ice cream ready for the ninja in the freezer.)
Today, I will have more of the bone broth that I made with the neckbones and veggies, and now I am cooking my next batch. The next BB soup is smoked neckbones, so it will go good with cabbage in with the regular veggies (carrots, onion, garlic, celery). I have the bones cooking now, and by tonight it should be cooked enough to add the veggies and then slow cook those overnight. I think I will add a few beans to this soup, too. I am having more of a soup than just drinking broth, and I like that because there is not substance to it than just plain broth would have, and it still has the same nutrients. I found a Soup Diet book that was on Kindle Unlimited, so I am reading that now, and if it looks worth buying then , I will add it to my library eventually . Otherwise, I just screenshot recipes I want to save. This is going to be a day to day thing, and see if I can make it just having mainly the bone broth soup for the whole three weeks that Dr. Kellyann recommends, and if I actually feel better afterwards. The weather is so cold, and I am looking forward to my hot soup breakfast !
When you cook a batch of chicken (lately I'm air frying drumsticks in a parchment liner) and let part of it cool to hold as leftovers, the congealed "drippins'" when it cools have a lot of jelly as well as the fat. I suspect that's worth separating out, like the bones and cartilage (and perhaps even the skin?) for creating broths. Any verdicts on this, or even opinions?
I remember my mother telling me to eat the cartilage on the chicken drumsticks when I was still a kid, and I have pretty much done that ever since. You used to be able to buy chicken backs and necks, which made good broth for things like chicken noodle soup or chicken and rice, now it seems like they cut the chicken so that most of those parts are incorporated with some other part of the chicken, or at least I have not seen them sold separately in quite a few years now. You can definitely make a soup broth from those leftover leg pieces, plus the gelatin that cooks out when you air fry the legs. I am still really new at doing this, and I don’t like just drinking a clear broth, so I cook the bones with whatever meat is on them for about a day (in crockpot on low overnight), with a little ACV added to help leach out minerals. Then I add more chopped veggies and let it cook another day with the veggies, and at the end, I have a nice soup that has some veggie pieces (onion,carrot, celery, garlic), and a good rich broth with lots of flavor , and whatever meat has cooked off in the process. At that point, it is ready to eat and I take out the bones. The chicken bones are still pretty hard, so I throw them out, but some of the neck bones have softened enough that I can actually chew and eat them, so I do that. I found some short ribs at Aldi yesterday, and those bones should cook down to edible bones, too. That will be the next ones i try after I have eaten the soup that I am making from the smoked neck bones. The book says you can make a fish bone broth, too, but I am not sure if I would like the taste of that or not.
I don't eat a lot of it, but the heart docs have pushed "oily fish" including tuna. I try to look for deals on solid white in water, and being a stubborn skinflint I'll usually use the drained water in cooking pasta for a tuna casserole of some sort. I seldom cook pasta "properly" but instead use a "Microhearth" pan in the microwave oven, and meter the liquids I use to avoid a wet result that needs much draining. A bit of oil help stop sticking and clumping, and I'll usually start at maybe 5 minutes at 30% power and then stir to break things up before going on to cook until tender, adding water as needed. Somewhere along the line adding dry ingredients to make a sauce, and at some point adding things like cut broccoli or a can of RO-TEL and cooked ground beef and so on - depending on what I'm making. So even a clear fish broth should have its uses. I'm not sure I'd relish it as a soup base, but with the right set of add-ins who can say? Fish and dumplings?
I was at the Kroger near Richmond today and asked if they sold bones. The guy pointed me to one of the areas with the stand-alone freezers and said they sell a 2# pak for $10. I was gonna take a pic and post it here but could not find it, and I didn't want to make the guy stop what he was doing and show me for something I wasn't gonna buy. Their website does not show anything like that, so I wonder if it's like the other Kroger store nearer me where they pak it from their meat department. It may be worth asking at you local stores, for those who are interested. You'll not be able to order it online.