Beef Bone Broth

Ingredients

• Beef soup bones; 5 lbs or so.

• Salt

• Pepper

• 1/4 c. tomato paste

• 1/4 olive olive oil

• 1 large or 2 small onions

• 6+ cloves of garlic (your preference)

• 4-5 large carrots or 1/2 bag of baby carrots

• 4 ribs of celery (optional)

• 2 tsp thyme

• 1 tsp rosemary

• 4-5 bay leaves

• 3 gallons of water (cold or room temp, not hot)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Cover a cookie sheet or baking dish large enough to hold all of the bones, with foil. Drizzle with olive oil or spray with a non-stick spray.

Pat your bones dry and season with salt and pepper on the meaty sides.

Spread tomato paste on each piece evenly. I used a knife to portion it out.

Drizzle the olive oil evenly over the bones. I then used a basting brush to smoosh everything together and essentially frost the bones with the tomato/oil mixture.

Roast the bones for 30 minutes; turning every 10 minutes so as not to burn on the pan. You will get some dark browning, which is ok.

While meat is roasting, toss all the vegetables and herbs into a large stock pot or roaster.

When meat is done, put directly into the stock pot.

Gently scrape the fond (the dark, caramelized bits and oils) from the pan with a rubber scraper into the pot.

Add water to pot. Give everything a stir and cover.

— If using a stock pot: heat on high until just boiling, remove cover and then turn heat to low in order to simmer. DO NOT COVER WHEN SIMMERING!

— For a roaster or crock pots (you’ll need 2 large ones) cover and turn on high until hot, then reduce heat to med/low in order to maintain a simmer. Open cover 1/2 way in order to let the steam out.

Time:

If you’re simmering on a stove, do so for a minimum of 6 hours. For a roaster or crock pot the time may take anywhere from 12-24 hours. Skim off the foamy weird stuff that will float to the top. Or don't, its up to you. What you want to happen is to reduce the amount of liquid to almost half in order for the tasty meaty bits that add the flavor are concentrated in less water. At this point, remove the large pieces of bones and veg from the pot and then strain the rest through a fine sieve into another pot-I recommend 2x if you can. If there’s good meat left on the bones, clean it off and save for another recipe! Toss out the vegetables, they’ve been cooked to death.

Taste the broth, if its still too watery, cook it down a bit more. This isn’t an exact science, if there’s enough flavor for you, its done! I recommend NOT adding additional salt. Remember, this is broth, not soup. You can add all the seasonings that are necessary for each recipe that you will use this for later.

At this point, if you’re ready to can it, keep it warm on the stove or in your crockpot/roaster while you prepare the pressure canner. THIS HAS TO BE PRESSURE CANNED or frozen! Jars should be clean and “warm” in order to prevent breakage from adding a hot liquid to a cold jar, but do not need to be sanitized, the pressure canning process takes care of that.

Fill jars to a 1 inch headspace, wipe edges with vinegar and add lids & bands. Add to canner. You’ll pressure can this for 25 minutes for quart jars and 20 minutes for pint jars at 10 psi weighted and 11 psi dial gauge. Once time is complete, turn off the heat and let the pressure go down to zero. Remove the weighted gauge and let the final bit of steam and pressure out. Remove canner lid and let it cool for 10 minutes before removing the jars.

Tip-add a glug of vinegar to your canner water to keep calcium and other minerals from making your jars all cloudy after! I obviously forgot here.

If you need to wait and don’t have the fridge space, keep the broth in a crock pot on low or warm to keep it at a safe temperature.

This broth can also be easily frozen in quart size containers-I’ve used deli containers, ziplocks, whatever is freezer safe in the size you need.

Makes 4 1/2 - 5 quarts (depends on how much you cooked it down)

Small Batches: if you only have 1 crockpot, or a small stock pot, just cover the bottom in bones, 1-2 lbs will do, use less vegetables and less seasoning and fill with water. It really is that easy. You’ll still want to cook it down to 1/2 the liquid, so it may make only 2-3 quarts of finished product, and it may be easier to just freeze those, but its a great way to use any extra meat bones you may have.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe!