Easy Bone Broth for Gut Health
Bone broth is not only comforting, it's a great way to help heal your gut in a whole foods way.
Hi, I'm Jessie Gutsue and I'm a functional medicine dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic. If you're interested in more gut healthy cooking tips, then check out the link below for our Five Tips For Quicker Gut Healthy Cooking.
Now let's talk about bone broth and gut health. We're going to talk about some top reasons why it might help heal our gut, how to make our really simple bone broth at home. And if you're not up for that, some benefits of store-bought bone broth. So let's get started.
[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]
Let's first talk about what our gut is.
So our gut is our mouth to anus, the tube that actually connects our inside body to the outside world. It's really wild to think about, but it has a lot of responsibility. So our gut is one layer of cells thick. Despite that it is responsible for digesting and absorbing our nutrients and keeping things like pathogens out, it is a lot of responsibility and it's used all the time. So it's important to make sure that the integrity of our gut lining is there because what I'm referring to is probably what you've heard of as leaky gut or intestinal permeability. So really important things, especially when talking about food sensitivities and allergies. They're really prevalent when it comes down to this intestinal lining because a lot of our immunity resides in our gut, which is this tube that I speak of. So let's talk about the seven benefits of bone broth for our gut health.
Now, a lot of this research is done on collagen and is sort of deduced onto bone broth because there's a lot of overlap. So it's important to keep in mind that a lot of this research is deduced from other research based on collagen, for example, and not bone broth itself, but there's a lot of overlapping nutrients, and that's how I've come to these seven benefits.
7 Benefits of Bone Broth for Gut Health
Rich Source of Gelatin
So the first one is that it's a rich source of gelatin, and gelatin is a source of collagen. And really gelatin is like when a bone broth is cooled, you can see the firming and it's like gelatinous, hence the word gelatin. There's a lot of gelatin in a good bone broth and actually a tip for you, the more gelatinous it is, the higher it is in a lot of nutrients. So keep that in mind. And these nutrients are things like proline that can help. It's an amino acid that helps to calm and is an important phase two detoxifier. Although some of these nutrients aren't as consistent in bone broth as a supplement, say collagen, they are present depending on the source. So that's important to keep in mind. So gelatin also helps to strengthen the gut lining by the theory is to encourage the mucosal barrier, and that helps to strengthen the integrity of the gut lining itself.
Contains Key Amino Acids
Moving on to the second benefit are the amino acids. And I said there's a lot of overlap, but some of the primary amino acids found in collagen are prolene, glycine and glutamine. And these are the three primary amino acids that can be really helpful in healing our gut. And again, the proline is a primary amino acid in calming and detoxification. The glycine is one that is important in structural integrity of tissues. The last one is glutamine, and this is conditionally essential amino acid. Then that means that at points of higher stress, that glutamine is needed in higher amounts. And glutamine is one that's really well studied to help with the gut lining. And so depending on the type of bone broth you found, you may have more or less amounts of these amino acids, but still present to some extent and therefore helpful.
Easy to Digest
The third benefit of bone broth for gut health is its easy digestibility. So anything in drinking form, this would be considered something great for an elemental diet. So something where there's minimal digestion that has to take place that's really beneficial for those that have digestive difficulty where much of the digestion is already done and that's done with this slow cook over the course of several hours. This bone broth tends to be much easier digested and absorbed, and therefore you would glean more than nutrients that you otherwise would if you had to say digest it yourself if you have some trouble with digestion.
Supports Electrolyte & Mineral Balance
The fourth benefit of bone broth is the fact that it helps with electrolyte and mineral balances, and that is because you are drinking something or you're having a soup, so you therefore get more hydration. But also because when we cook down things like bones, you get the calcium, the magnesium, the potassium all found in the bones themselves and the salt that you have as well. And so it helps with the electrolyte balance.
Anti-Inflammatory Properties
The fifth benefit is bone broths, any inflammatory properties. So bone broth can be a part of an anti-inflammatory diet, which is really an important factor when thinking about a diet as a whole. If you reduce the fire found within you, and that's a silly way of talking about inflammation, but it's sort of an easier visual, then your body has less combative nature that it has to deal with. So if you reduce that inflammation and that glycine, that amino acid is a really important part of this that helps reduce the overall inflammation that's found in bone broth.
Provides Potential Prebiotics
And then the sixth benefit is the potential prebiotics. So if you make your bone broth with onions, garlics, leeks, maybe some carrots, you get those prebiotics, they're cooked down a long time and then they're more easily digested too. So there is the potential for prebiotics that again come in a more easily digestible way for those with digestive upset like IBD or IBS where they may not be able to tolerate these really long chain carbohydrates.
They're called fructooligosaccharides. So if you follow a low FODMAP diet, this might be a better way to get in some of these prebiotics that you otherwise couldn't tolerate in whole food form.
Promotes Relaxation & Stress Reduction
The final benefit in not one to be diminished is the idea of setting with a warm cozy cup of bone broth if you so choose to just sip on bone broth, I won and such a lover of warm beverages. It doesn't matter if it's any kind of tea, golden milk coffee, hot cocoa bone broth. I love it. And I truly take it to be like my active relaxation in that day. And I pick my favorite mug and I grasp it with two hands and I smell and I look around. And honestly, it is not a benefit to be diminished, as I mentioned, because stress is one of the biggest drivers of our health elements today.
And the bummer is we are becoming a more conscious society in terms of nutrition and various other things that we can do, but we really haven't brought stress up to the level of importance because it just seems almost too easy, but also too difficult to actually implement those stress combative stress reducing ways in our life. Sitting and breathing seems too easy. We need to do all the other things instead of it.
So that's the final benefit of bone broth and really one that can help in the long term as you rewire your brain and rework your day so that your stress is reduced. You might see the need for reducing overall inflammation because stress might be your driver of inflammation. And I'm talking in circles a little bit, but it's got to make sense, right? So let's get into making our bone broth.
How to Make Bone Broth at Home
This is such a simple, I hope that you go home and do this because bone broth at the store can be pricey if it's of good quality. So let's talk really briefly about the differences between some of the bone broth stock and broth itself. So first, and let's put collagen in there too. So collagen is the supplemental form of a lot of amino acids. The primary are glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. And these are structured in a way that is called a triple helix. So this is the gold standard of it's the most abundant protein in our body, and collagen to an extent is found in these remaining the bone broth, the stock and the broth to a lesser extent, but sort of should be discussed at the same time too. So bone broth, we're going to start here. We're going to start with this whole carcass. So this is a carcass that I cooked yesterday. It's a chicken carcass meat birds that we have at home here. So I know exactly what they ate and how they were raised, and that's an important factor.
But bone broth is sied for the longest time of these three bone broth, stock and broth usually for a day usually includes carcass, a meat, veggies, aromatics, spices, and the like. And this is cooked, like I said, usually 12 to 24 hours. And these definitions vary a little bit, but this is like the generalization. And then you have stock and stock is maybe made the same, maybe with a carcass, maybe with just the meat, veggies, spices, herbs, those things. But it's cooked for more like eight hours, maybe just a day. And of course the longer the cooking time, the more nutrients you pull from carcass or the veggies or whatever it is that's included. And then to the smallest amount of nutrients is broth. And broth is more like what I would think of as a soup. So you start with your aromatics, you start with some oil, you throw your veggies in, you cook it down, you might add some meat and veggies and some water over top, and that creates a broth that is nutrient dense but not quite as much as the bone broth.
So those are your three steps. So that is just a simple explanation of those three. So now I'm going to start here. I do use my crockpot because I am going overnight and I don't want my stove on, but you're welcome to choose your best option there. So I start with my carcass. I cooked it with lemons and herbs, but I'm going to add some as well just to make it more flavorful and more nutrient dense. So I'm going to add here just a half a chopped onion. I'm cleaning out the fridge a little bit. I have it's winter here, so my herbs available outside are pretty sparse, but I have a couple sprigs of sage that I'll toss in. And then I am tossing in a few carrots, so we'll toss those in. And then I get about three quarts of stock when I make my bone broth.
So I have three quarts here of good water, so I use reverse osmosis water. So do think about all of the components that begin your bone broth, so you're getting the best of quality. I mentioned before where I got my carcass from, but that's important.
Conventionally made bone broth is better than no node bone broth at all.
So by all means use what you have, but you'd be surprised how many people don't utilize the remnants of an animal that you could probably say to your neighbor hunter or go to the farmer's market or to the butcher and get some pieces that are pretty darn cheap and of good quality. If you are cooking poultry, then you want to look for things like pasture raised and organic is the federally regulated term. And then on the other side is red meat, which is typically more labeled as grass fed or again, organic would be the federally regulated term.
So you'd want to look for those. If you're using conventional, like I said, it's fine, it's better than nothing. But do be aware that if there were chemicals or hormones or antibiotics depending on the animal that was used, then you do get some of that. There is the potential for some of that in your final product. So just something to be aware of. So I have three quarts here, and really what I do is I go to cover my carcass. Now, I mentioned before that the gelatin, you can see the amount of gelatin based on the gelatinous of the chilled broth at the finish. And so the more water you use, the thinner, more diluted it will be. And so I just sort of play and see where I'm at here. I won't use quite all three of these. I'm just going to go just to fuzz more.
And I usually do this every couple of weeks. This is part of my rotation, so I don't have to preserve this in any way, but I know if you're handling a lot of carcasses at once, a lot of people will can their stock so that they've got it on back stock. You can bag 'em and freeze 'em. So put 'em in big ziplock bags, lay 'em sideways to freeze like books. If you freeze 'em in a glass jar, just keep enough head space so that there's not expansion and braking. But I find that I can go through a few courts of this in a matter of two, three weeks, and then I do the rotation again. I will occasionally, depending on the season, will sip the broth as mentioned more often. I use it for cooking, so I love to cook my grains in broth, especially if we don't have meat or we are using the leftover of the carcass from the night before, so there's not a ton of meat.
You get a lot more protein that way. If you cook the grains in it, you also get a lot more flavor. And then I also of course use it in things like stocks and soups. So very easy to find uses for. And I'm going to let this simmer for about a day. So I'm going to put my top on and simmer this for about a day. Now, when it is ready and when it is fully cooked, I will come back through here and I will grab my cup and I will, I'm going to slide this out of the way and I'm going to show you, you could bag put all these ingredients in a cheesecloth, and that way the straining is a little bit easier. I think this is pretty simple. What I do is I grab my quart, put a funnel in on the top just so it keeps a little bit cleaner.
And then all I do, I put this in my sink so that if they're slashing, I don't have a huge mess, I just do a fine mesh strainer over the top, and I take my stock and I pour it in and I just repeat. And I usually end up, like I said, with about three quarts. So be prepared with your jars or whatever your containers are when you're ready to pull it out. And I find this a very simple process once you've done it once, it feels like it's a really nice rhythm to your life.
So I love it for that, I hope you enjoy this. I want to know your favorite ways to enjoy bone broth or to make bone broth fun little twists that you maybe do differently. If you are interested in more 30 minute cooking demos, then
Email us at cookingdemos@oswalddigestiveclinic.com.
And there you will find out more information about maybe titles we've done in the past, best fits for you, and we'd love to hear from you, and I can't wait to see you next time. Thanks again.
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