Bonkers for Bone Broth

So, I’ve heard of broth. I contribute to the blog for a soup website – how could I avoid hearing about broth? I’ve heard of beef broth, chicken broth, vegetable broth, even fish broth… but I’d be lying to you if I said that my eyes didn’t bulge out of their sockets when I heard about bone broth.

“Bone broth!” the spooky part of my brain exclaimed, “I can use that as a base to add my eye of newt and toe of frog to make a curséd potion for my enemies to drink! This is the food I can use to fuel the armies of the undead I shall call upon!”

Then, it turned out that bone broth was much more commonplace and much less Halloween-y than I had hoped it would be. Bone broth is essentially just a soup base that is made by simmering bones and animal joints for hours to extract nutrients and flavour. Apparently, the idea came about from the traditional hunter-gatherer approach of using every part of the animal to get as much nutrition out of a successful hunt as possible.

Bone Broth’s Ancient Beginnings

While it is an ancient recipe, I’ve noticed there’s been a bit of an uptick in mentions of bone broth in online recipes and on restaurant or takeaway menus. What has made this old staple into the newest food fad? Did I miss another paleo-diet surge?

Turns out there are a ton of health benefits that people are realising about bone broth that is making it a popular food – amino acids are plentiful to improve the look and strength of your skin, it supports weight loss by being filling while being low in fat, and may even support regulating a healthy sleep pattern due to its glycerine content.

Still though, it seemed to be a bit of a creepy name for the newest ‘it’ food. The more I think about it, the more I understand why we humans like to classify food and the animals they come from differently – you can rationalise eating beef, but you get sad if you eat a cow. In this situation, there’s no avoiding the fact that you’re essentially drinking bones.

The Verdict on Bone Broth

I gave it a try – my favourite Italian restaurant down the road started making and freezing bone broth as a take-away to be thawed and eaten with ravioli which, I am told, is the traditional way to eat ravioli (but please don’t tell them that I prefer ravioli with napolitana and a ton of Parmesan cheese). I thought it was good, and I’m game to try out pretty much anything to give my skin an extra boost to get rid of the ‘maskne’ we’re all now constantly at risk of.

So, if you’ve got 12 to 24 hours to kill and you’ve got a bunch of animal bones in your fridge (and really, who doesn’t?), embrace your inner witch and simmer a cauldron of bone broth to improve your complexion, trim your figure, and (maybe) curse your enemies with a potion.

(Simply Souperlicious indemnifies itself for any curses incurred by using bone broth. Terms and conditions apply.)