A Recipe for Winter: Oh, So Easy Bone Broth

 

I have a recipe for you.: Bone Broth. Its all the rage, right now. Despite that, I love it!  Very soothing. Endlessly useful. Highly adaptable. Good for you. The most impressive thing is how easy it is. What I can’t believe is that my mother, and my grandmother never seemed to do this. It seems like a no brainer!

In the past I made broths, by cooking the leftover meat usually on the bones, for a few hours. It was invariably disappointing – weak, and not worth the effort. This is officially called a ‘Broth.” I then read about making bone broth. It is really considered a ‘Stock’, in cooking terms. This is much more worthwhile! So much more flavorful!

Research shows that chicken bone broth actually does help you heal when you are sick. Researcher at Nebraska Medical Center found that chicken soup made the traditional manner decreases the symptoms of upper respiratory infections. Low calorie soup also has been found to reduce calorie intake.

I felt great getting to use my herbs at the end of their season. I did have to dig under the leaves to find the oregano, and though my pineapple sage had died with the first frost, the leaves were still fragrant. Our whole house smelled delicious for 3 days!

Plus, my daughter loves to say vegetable butts! These ‘waste’ pieces no longer feed my compost, instead they flavor my stock! We keep them in a collecting can in the freezer. Adding vegetables enhances the flavor and reduces the need for salt to taste.  The vinegar helps the bone release their calcium into the broth, just like that old rubber chicken bone trick!

 

Bone Broth Recipe

Ingredients:

Meat bones

Vegetable butts

Herbs such as rosemary, thyme, sage, parsley

Water

1/4 cup vinegar

Instructions:

Place bones in a large stock pot. Add vinegar, vegetable butts, and herbs. Cover generously with water. Bring to a boil, turn heat down and simmer on low heat. Cook poultry bones for 24 hours. Cook pork or beef for 72 hours (3 days). Keep solids covered with water.

Cool. Drain liquid and discard solid remains. Refrigerate. Consider skimming the fat off once cooled, for lower calorie broth. Use within 48 hours or freeze for later use.

Happy cooking and Happy Holidays!

-by Tama Cathers, BS, MS, DVM, SC (sometimes cook), SG (sometimes gardener), SA (sometimes asleep), SN (sometimes not).

RESOURCES:

Chicken soup

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11035691

Soup and calorie intake

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15976148

 Cover Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

 

Forewarning: These pictures turned out a little gory!

Asian Beef Broth Soup

Asian Beef Broth Soup

It was rainy and cold and I was out of ideas for dinner one day. Craving this type of soup, I found a several recipes, made changes, and ended up with this soup. I like stir frying the veggies separately, as it keeps them from becoming over cooked. This requires a little more effort, and there is the standard recipe at the bottom.

I think this soup could be made in to a cool summer time alternative, if I were organized enough to not be starving when I made it. Still, it’s savory in the winter and not too hot in the summer. It passes the taste test for my kid, and when the veggies were kept separated, added just before eating, it traveled well, unlike second day Pho!

Lots of Veggies. Warm & Soothing. Quick to make. I like this soup very much!

 

Asian Beef Broth Soup

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup rice – Bonton (semi-sticky white) or Jasmine work well

1lb ground turkey or ground beef, cooked into large chunks over medium heat or 1 lb stew meat in 1 inch cubes

½ Tablespoon Olive Oil

1/2 teaspoon Sesame Seed Oil

*

4 Cups Beef Broth, or Beef Bone Broth

¼ Cup Soy Sauce

¼ cup Sake or Cooking Sherry

2 Teaspoons Sesame Seed Oil

4-6 green onions chopped

3 Tablespoons Brown Sugar

1-2 cloves minced garlic or 1 scant teaspoon prepared garlic

1 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger, or 1 ½ teaspoon minced ginger

*

1 ½ cup sliced carrots

1 ½ cup sliced bokchoy    (I love this stuff)

1 cup Chinese pea pods (flat) or green pea pods (puffy)

1 ½ cup sliced mushrooms

(I like portabella’s, shitake is nice too, but doesn’t pass the daughter-taste test)

Hot sauce: Sriracha or Ground Chili Garlic Oil

 

Instructions:

Start rice.

In a cooking pot, brown the meat on all sides. Drain meat if necessary (beef). Add beef broth, soy sauce, sherry, brown sugar, sesame seed oil, garlic and ginger. Have a sip of sherry. See – it’s only worth cooking with! Good thing your not drinking!  Cover bring to a boil and simmer for 10 – 20 minutes.

Stir fry the vegetables and add separately to soup. Cook carrots on high for 3-5 minutes, add bokchoy stem pieces for 2 minutes, then add onions, leafy bokchoy and mushrooms, stir intermittently, until tender, then add the pea pods last, so everything is still fresh and brightly colored.

Add hot sauce to flavor.

Serve jasmine rice, or optionally: finish rice by adding sushi seasoning to bonton rice and stir well while hot.

Serve soup, add vegetables, and finish with a scoop of rice in the bowl. Serve hot, or in summer, slightly cooled.

Notes:

Alternatively you can add the vegetables to the broth. Add carrots first, cook until starting to become slightly tender, but still bright – 5 to 10 minutes. Add the rest of the vegetables and cook 3 to 5 minutes so color is bright and tenders or vegetables are just slightly tender. It is harder to maintain freshness in the vegetables if you cook the soup this way, and left-over’s are not as nice, but it is easier, so warrants mention!

Herbal:

To add some herbal medicine, other than the fresh veggies, consider using some shitake mushrooms, and definitely throw in a slice of Astragalus root (often found at Asian Markets or health food stores, some Gobo root (Burdock – found at Asian Markets).

Burdock Information:

My daughter loves it, I think it’s fine, we think it tastes like celery. My fiancé dislikes it. He says it tastes like flowers, and is not something he wants in his soup.

Burdock root, with the Japanese name ‘Gobo’, and the scientific name Arctium lappa, is the tap root of a burdock, grown as a vegetable and flavoring agent in Asian cooking.

It is considered a winter tonic in Western herbal medicine, thus, it goes in most of my soups in the winter. It’s herbal actions also include use of the roots, seeds and leaves.

It is a perennial in the Asteraceae Family. There are no know side effects from Burdock or drug interactions, however , it is reported that you can get contact dermatitis from handling the plant. I suspect this means the whole plant and not the nice little roots you can by at Asian markets.

It is a great source of manganese and magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, iron, or copper.  It also has good amounts of folate, vitamin C, and pantothenic acid. Burdock has a high inulin, a prebiotic, it supports the growth of healthy bacteria. However, it is important to cook it well, or it can give you gas.

“The Difference between a Weed and a Flower is a Judgment” –  Unknown

 

by Tama Cathers

Burdock in the ‘wild’

Soup broth

Spicy options

Second Day Soup

Spicy options

 

Cream of Zucchini Soup

Cream of Zucchini Soup

I still have Zucchini and sour cream left.  So, this is another recipe for the both of them. (I am going to repeat this soup ad nauseam with different vegetables, until I finally run out of sour cream.)   Cauliflower is next up and sitting in the oven ready to roast, because we ate all the zucchini soup up.  To be honest, I like zucchini, but even I am ready for a break.  How about you?  If I have any left over – I am making cake!

Notes on Nutrition: Well, it’s dicey.  The healthiness of this soup would go up if the 1/2 cup sour cream was reduced to 2 Tablespoons of Reduced Fat sour cream.  That is for normal people, in normal situations, i.e those lacking 1/2 gallon of sour cream they need to get rid of.  By the way, sour cream does not freeze well. It separates.  It may still be fine for soup, but I wasn’t ready to give up on yet.

 

RECIPE: Cream of Zucchini Soup

INGREDIENTS:

1 small onion, quartered

1 cloves garlic

3 medium or 1 large zucchini, skin on, cut in large chunks

4 cups broth (chicken or vegetable)

½ cup sour cream (or 2 -4 Tablespoons reduced fat sour cream or fat free unflavored greek yogurt)

salt and black pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine chicken broth, onion, garlic and zucchini in a large pot over medium heat and bring to a boil.
2. Lower heat, cover, simmer until tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Remove from heat. Purée with a food processor or blender.
4. Add the sour cream, blend until smooth.
5. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust to taste. Serve hot.

 

 

 

 

Baked Summer Squash Basil Casserole

Baked Summer Squash Basil  Casserole

This was my all time favorite zucchini dish of the summer, (well except maybe for the chocolate cake, which is scheduled to post in a few weeks.) It was savory, and used up a ton of the things I had left over from the summer and our wedding: zucchini, sour cream and cheese.  We grew a wheel barrow full of squash this year, most of it enormous.  We also had literally a 1/2 gallon of left over sour cream, a 1/2 gallon of salsa, and a pan of queso type cheese.  I hate to waste things, so I scrambled to use the ingredients as quickly as I could.

It also fit my bill for a quick fix when I wanted to eat some bread or a sweet, as I try to go flour/refined sugar free. I would have never guessed it would be able to satisfy those cravings, but it was superior to most everything else.   None of these are low fat or low calorie recipes, so use fat free sour cream substitutes, or limit your portions.

Because I used white cheese and nuts, rather than cheddar cheese and bread crumbs, the casserole was not as beautiful as it might have been, but the taste! – Oh So Good! It approved a very high kid approval rating, both my daughter and step son ate it and had seconds! Personally, I ate it for days as my go to snack.  Later,  I blenderized the whole thing and had it again as soup. It was just as good. In fact, it was Soup-er!

RECIPE: Baked Summer Squash, with basil

INGREDIENTS:

5 chopped Basil Leaves, and 5 whole leaves, or 2 basil plant budding tops

3 medium or 1 large zucchini or yellow summer squash, skin on, cut into slices (remove seeds if you have gigantic squash, like we do)

1 cup sour cream

½ cup cheese (I used feta and some left over white mexican cheese from our wedding taco bar)

½ teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon butter

3 Tablespoons crushed sliced almonds (use bread crumbs, or bread alternatives or nut free recipe)

2 Tablespoons grated Parmesan Cheese

2 Tablespoons green onion, sliced

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cut squash into 1/2 inch slices.  Place the squash and the sprigs of basil in a pot with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes or until slightly tender. Drain well. Place the zucchini in a 1 1/2 quart greased casserole dish, mixing in the chopped basil.
2. Combine the cheese, sour cream, butter, and salt in a small saucepan; stirring constantly, cook over medium-low heat until the cheese melts. Pour the cheese sauce over the squash.
3. Combine the almonds ( or breadcrumbs), green onion slices, and Parmesan cheese, sprinkle over the casserole.
4. Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, broil lightly 5-10 minutes so casserole is slightly browned.