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Real Food Lover has moved to a new address Real Food Lover.net
See you there for more recipes and chats about sustainable, ecological ways to produce food in ways that are healthy for the soil, air, wildlife, farm animals and humans.
Beef broth soothes the digestion and produces easy-to-absorb minerals including calcium. Made with bones, it is a low-cost way of sustaining your health. Bones cost a few pounds.
(Apologies to vegetarians and vegans and please let us know your best tonics.)
“A good broth will resurrect the dead,”
– South American proverb.
Read more about broth’s healing powers at the Weston Price Foundation and the way broth also delivers easy-to-absorb broken-down material from cartilage and tendons that might help arthritis and joint pain.
I bought the beef rib bones from Sheepdrove Organic Farm for £2.50 per kg.
Why organic? Because I want to eat meat from an animal which has not been given routine antibiotics, which has chewed fresh grass in the fields as nature intended (not convenience-food grain that gives the beast a belly-ache), and can follow its natural animal behaviour.
I used a recipe from Gut Gastronomy by nutritional therapist Vicky Edgson and Grayshott spa chef Adam Palmer based on the spa’s health regime. Published by Jacqui Small, this fine book with beautiful images by Lisa Linder is filled with highly nutritious recipes to help increase digestive health, and repair and nourish the body.
The Gut Gastronomy recipe uses beef marrow bones.
Here is the recipe (for four) slightly adapted.
Ingredients
3 kg (6lb 10 oz) beef marrow bones – ask the butcher to chop them into manageable chunks, about 3-5 cms (1-2 inches) pieces
4 carrots, 3 large onions, 4 celery sticks (optional), roughly chopped
5 litres (8 3/4 pints/20 cups) of cold water
(I used my biggest pan, about 5 pints, and this made a lovely, concentrated broth)
2 bay leaves, 10 whole peppercorns
If you have some, add half bunch of thyme.
I also added dried chilli for extra hotness.
Method
Roast the cut bones in a large roasting dish for 30 – 40 minutes at Gas Mark 7.
Drain 2 teaspoons of the fat from the bones into a large saucepan and sauté the veg.
(There was no fat from my rib bones so I omitted this stage and added the carrots and onions at the next stage, without frying them.)
Add the bay leaves, peppercorns (and dried chilli), sprigs of thyme and roasted bones and cover with 5 litres (8 3/4 pints/ 20 cups) of cold water. Skim any fat as you bring it to a simmer. Gently cook for 5 – 6 hours.
Broth is served clear, strained of meat and vegetables. Strain to make consommé, and cool before freezing. I shredded the plentiful meat from the bones and made several servings of delicious broth with meat (see top pic).
I swear I cured my poor inflamed gums thanks to this healing soup.
Fellow blogger, Annie Levy at Kitchen Counter Culture, suggested I used some of the broth for borscht, which I did, using my grandmother’s recipe.
And that is for the next blog post.
Update (January 2016): This recipe cured another bout of gum infection after two days of drinking 5 pints of the above broth (this time made with non-organic bones). It worked its magic.
Posted in eating well on a budget, health, organic, recipe
Tagged beef broth, benefits, budget, digestion, Grayshott spa, healing, health, Jacqi Small, Sheepdrove organic farm
Food lovers talk about taste in the mouth but what about the next bit, digestion?
My own digestion preoccupies me. It rules my life.
There is much confusing data about what foods are good for you. I base my decisions on how food feels after I have eaten it.
It is worth paying attention to how food feels as it travels through your gut. (I will stop there on the peristaltic journey).
I have recently been re-reading an old favourite, Three Men in the Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome.
Published in 1889, it was a hit from the start. I love Jerome K. Jerome because he gently mocks human folly in a hilarious way.
You know when you find someone attractive and it increases when you find you share similar values? Well, I recently learned Jerome K. Jerome hated poverty and oppression. “His early political instinct was radical socialist” and he later joined the Fabian Society, according to the editor of my (charity shop buy) 1998 edition, Geoffrey Harvey.
Jerome K. Jerome also thought digestion important.
He wrote (in Three Men in the Boat):
“One feels so forgiving and generous after a substantial and well-digested meal – so noble-minded, so kindly-hearted.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says, ‘Work!’. After beefsteak and porter, it says: ‘Sleep!’ After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup and don’t let it stand more than three minutes), it says to the brain, ‘Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!’
…We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgement.”