The season for sickness is upon us. 🦠I love to make Bone Broth when it starts to get cold outside to warm us up and nourish our bodies. We have been craving this ancient superfood! Fin loves it when we make Bone broth. He gobbles it down over almost everything else we put in front of him.
Bone broth is a powerhouse for nutritional benefits. It’s a wonderful source of minerals, amino acids, and collagen. It's great for your health and even your hormones. It’s a lengthy process to release the goodness from the bones but it’s not intensive if you have a slow cooker! I like things to be EASY! Especially with two kids now😅 I make our bone broth by popping our Grass-fed and finished bones into the slow cooker, covering them with water, and cooking for 24 hours. Set and forget until 24 hours later.
You can easily add spices, onions, celery, garlic and carrots to make it taste like a stock. I've seen dozens of recipes on the internet on how to make a good stock. I like to just make it easy and spice it when I use it to cook.
After cooking the bones in water for 24 hours, pull out the bones or use a sieve to get out all bits and bones. Then I like to let the broth cool and scrape the fat off the top to use in the place of oils or butters for cooking. You can choose to freeze the broth in ice trays or in big batches to use for soups.
It's worth noting that when you cook your own bone broth you will have a very beefy smell in the house. The fat you scrape off for cooking also has a very beefy flavour, so depending on your preference for taste, you may or may not like it use it to cook everything.
I've been wanting to make a Pho as it's one of my favourite things to eat. I don't like to use commercial broths because I find they don't have the depth of flavour or nutritional benefits of a homemade broth with bones from grass fed and finished cattle raised on our regenerative land.
The original recipe I used for this Pho was from Cookidoo for Thermomix. I've modified it with homemade bone broth but you can easily cook the spices then add the bones and water and cook as long as you'd like. My preference is to cook the Bone Broth for 24 hours to really release all the goodness from the bones.
What you will need for Broth:
Grass- fed and Finished Beef Bones (You can purchase ours here)
Water - enough to cover the beef bones (I have a 6L slow cooker and typically use between 1kg- 1.5kg of bones)
What you need for the pho:
1 tbs Olive oil
1 brown onion - medium
5 cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into slices
2 star anise
1 tsp Cinnamon or you can use 1 cinnamon quill
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1400 g water
80g fish sauce
1 tbsp lime juice (approx. 1 lime)
1⁄4 tsp salt
Noodles - I like using soba noodles but rice noodles are more traditional
500g Beef ( I used our Regeneratively Grass fed and finished diced beef but cut them into 1-2 cm cubes)
For the garnish:
2 spring onions
1 chili
Fresh coriander
Lime wedge
Steps:
1 - Make your bone broth by putting the bones into a slow cooker and covering with water and cooking for 24 hours. You can add the spices for the Pho in now or later pending on what you want to do with your bone broth and how much you are cooking.
2 - Heat up pot on low and add your oil. Once the oil is hot put your onion, ginger, stare anise, cinnamon, coriander and fennel seeds into the pot and cook for 5 min, stirring to prevent it from burning.
3 - Add 1200g of bone broth into the pot with the spices and let it cook for about an hour to infuse the spices into your broth
4 - Add the remaining ingredients of fish sauce, lime juice, 200g of water, and salt and pepper to taste for another 30 min on low.
5 - Start Cooking your noodles of choice (I like Soba or rice noodles) about 10 min before the Pho broth is finished.
6 - Strain the broth. Drain the noodles and put into 6 serving bowls
7 - Place beef on top of noodles and pour the hot broth over the beef (The hot broth will cook the beef)
8 - Garnish with shallots, coriander, chilli and lime wedge to the bowl
Enjoy!