Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Bone Broth: The Experiment is OVER!

I got through one quart of knuckle bone broth over the course of a week, but broth is only good for 3-4 days so I threw the other quart away. Yes, it was a waste of money, but I was very happy to get rid of the remainder. Good riddance crappy knuckle bone broth! I still have $15.00 worth of giant knuckles in my freezer. Some instructions say to mix the knuckles with the other bones, but I think I might put them on Freecycle and give them away...

Saturday morning and I'm at the co-op staring at the meat fridge trying to decide what to buy and what do I spy...bones. Bones? On a Saturday? Small packages of bones! I check the labels BEEF MARROW BONES! So they come in on other days besides Tuesday. Talk about not getting accurate information from co-op employees. Those people irritate me constantly.

 
How many kinds of bones are there?!!! So far I've found soup bones, knuckle bones, ox-tail bones, and marrow bones. These marrow bones were $3.99 lb. but they are so small the whole package was only $4.31. So I bought one, brought it home, baked it, then boiled it for about 20 hours and added veggies at the end. Marrow bone broth tastes much better than the knuckle bone broth and similar to the soup bone broth. Or is it just this batch? These marrow bones also didn't produce gel so this would be considered a failure.

The next day I boiled the ox-tail bones for a taste comparison. As you may recall, these are $7.99 lb so twice as expensive. Supposedly they have more cartilage than the soup bones but with a layer of juicy meat for taste. They tasted tolerable, but not as good as the marrow bone broth. And no gel either.

Left: ox-tail broth, Right: bone marrow broth
 
The only gel-producing bones were the first soup bone attempt and chicken bones. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm tired of this experiment.

I think my bone broth days are finally over!! Hooray!





3 comments:

  1. The marrow broth looks more like broth!

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  2. My take on the gelling issue: It's not a failure if it doesn't gel. It's just not as concentrated. The way to get it to gel is to add more bones than water. So it seems to me that non-gel is usually just more water in the broth. Probably better for you because of the healthy water! Drink twice as much of it and pretend it gelled. High marks for perseverance!

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    Replies
    1. That's comforting! I had one batch that hardly had any water and it still didn't gel, and I read to put enough water so the bones are covered and keep it that way so I'm not sure how to decrease the water without having the bones covered.

      I don't know...it's over. I'm tired. Too much stress. Bone broth shouldn't cause stress.

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