Chapter 4: Broth
Chapter 4: Healing Bone Broth
My Mother’s Ritual
When I was a child, my mother refused to buy canned soup. I remember standing in the grocery aisle, staring at the shelves of mouth-watering labels. Every other family seemed to have them stacked in their pantry.
But my mother shook her head. “They taste like the can,” she’d say.
Instead, she made her own. Bones saved from a roasted chicken. Onion skins and carrot tops kept in a bag in the freezer. She’d toss them into a pot, cover with water, and let it simmer for hours.
And we LOVED it. The smell would permeate our whole house, and we’d beg to drink it before the 4 hours were up.
It wasn’t until years later — after I’d spent a decade chasing convenience, microwaving my meals between work deadlines, numbing myself with chips and takeout — that I realized what she had been giving us. Her broth wasn’t just comfort. It was medicine.
Liquid Gold From What Others Discard
The most nourishing thing you can make starts with what others throw away. When you cook with real foods, you end up with scraps. Save your onion skins, carrot tops, celery ends, herb stems—all the parts you'd normally toss. Add cold water, bring to a simmer for a few hours, and you have broth. Simple, nutritious, and delicious.
Making broth is not so different from making tea or coffee. Water acts as an agent to gently pull out nutrients and hold onto them. Most people throw out water when they boil vegetables, not knowing they're throwing away most of the nutrients from the plants. Sure, you get fiber, but all the delicate compounds, the flavors, the magic—that's in the water. Hot water is an extraordinary extractor. It pulls vitamins, minerals, and aromas from whatever you put in it. When you make any broth, you're harnessing this same power—capturing nutrients in liquid form that your body can easily absorb.
The History Hidden in Our Bones
Bone broth may be trending, but making it is one of the oldest human behaviors we can name. Archaeology across Africa and in caves in Israel shows ancient bones with deliberate percussion marks—hacking to get at the nutrients inside. For at least 400,000 years, humans have been cracking bones for marrow.
Vultures may have been our earliest teachers. They drop bones from heights of 300 feet (the height of the Statue of Liberty) to shatter them and access the fat-rich marrow that makes up 90% of their diet. They understood something essential: bones hold concentrated nutrition. Based on half a million years of these bone piles, our bodies really understand marrow. Marrow is dense in fats and fat-soluble nutrients that a growing, energy-hungry brain loves. Cracking bones and simmering scraps likely helped fund the upgrade from “survivor” to “storyteller.”
But it was not until we learned to boil and hold water, possibly around 100,000 years ago, that we could really harness all that was in those bones. The leap from eating raw marrow to making bone broth required one critical innovation: cooking vessels. Our oldest evidence of pottery can be found in Chinese caves dating around 20,000 years ago. But "oldest found" doesn’t mean "first invented"—it often just means "best preserved." My bet on the origins of broth lies in Africa, the source of all humanity, where tropical heat and acidic soils make preservation of early, soft materials unlikely.
The fact is, we know of many traditional cultures that cook foods without pots using methods that leave no trace:
Stone boiling: Heating rocks in a fire, then dropping them into water-filled pits or containers.
Organic vessels: Animal stomachs, bladders, hides, or tightly woven baskets.
Earth ovens: Covered pits lined with hot stones and leaves that hold in heat and steam.
Our ancestors figured out how to use hot water as an extraction medium, and in doing so, they unlocked a revolution in nutrition.
The Science Hidden in Tradition
When you simmer bones in water for hours, something miraculous happens: the boundary between solid and liquid blurs.
Collagen becomes Gelatin: Collagen from connective tissue dissolves into gelatin, carrying amino acids like glycine, proline, and glutamine. These are the primary building blocks for our own collagen, and in this liquid form, they are so bioavailable your body can put them to work immediately.
Minerals are Released: Minerals like calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus leach from the bone into the broth.
The Gut is Healed: Glutamine fuels the cells of the small intestine, helping to repair a "leaky" gut.
The Nerves are Calmed: Glycine is a key inhibitory neurotransmitter, helping to 'turn down the volume' on a stressed nervous system and aiding sleep.
Joints and Skin are Supported: This flood of usable collagen supports joints, skin, hair, and even helps smooth lumpy collagen, like cellulite, from the inside out.
Your gut is where 70% of your immune system lives and where most of your serotonin is produced. Bone broth, humble as it seems, is one of the simplest ways to strengthen that entire ecosystem.
Contrast that with what I ate during my busiest years: bouillon cubes and canned soups. Convenience disguised as food. They filled my stomach but left my body starving, the nutrients replaced by salt and additives. As an engineer, I can’t ignore the logic: put empty inputs in, and you get fatigue and inflammation out. Put nutrient-rich broth in, and you get resilience out.
Why Quality Matters
When making broth, quality matters more than with almost any other food. Bones concentrate everything the animal was exposed to during its life. Toxins, hormones, and antibiotics from conventional farming get extracted right along with the good stuff.
When you simmer bones for hours, you're creating a concentrated extract. Quality ingredients become concentrated nutrition; questionable ingredients become concentrated problems.
This is why choosing organic, pasture-raised, grass-fed and grass-finished bones is a worthwhile investment.
Better Nutrition: They consume their natural diet, which improves their nutritional profile (more omega-3s, more vitamins A and K2).
Cleaner Food: They aren't given routine antibiotics or synthetic hormones.
Stronger Bones: They move naturally, developing bones with better mineral density.
You vote with your fork with every choice you make. When you buy from farmers who are raising animals this way, you are voting for their welfare and for your family's.
The First Act of Rebellion
To make broth today is almost countercultural. It asks us to slow down. To save scraps. To let something simmer all day. In a world of instant everything, broth is the quiet rebellion that says: health takes time.
It’s also personal. Every culture has its version: Jewish chicken soup, Chinese medicinal soups, French pot-au-feu, Mexican caldo de res. When you make broth, you’re not following a trend. You’re reconnecting with something timeless.
The first restaurants in Europe actually started from women bringing homemade broth to sick patients in hospitals. The word "restaurant" itself comes from the French restaurer, "to restore oneself." People at any age can eat it, at any stage of health. Fancy broth shops now sell it like lattes in New York City, but at its heart, it's the food of peasants. People used to use the term alchemy for trying to turn metals into gold. This kitchen spell turns scraps into liquid gold for our cells.
Benefits for Children
For growing children, bone broth offers exceptional nutritional support. The minerals support bone and tooth development. The amino acids fuel rapid growth. The gelatin supports a healthy gut lining, which is crucial since 70% of their immune system resides there.
For picky eaters or children with poor appetites, broth can be a nutritional safety net. Even small amounts provide concentrated nutrition. It can be sipped plain, used as a base for sauces, or used to cook rice and pasta in ways they don't even notice.
Recipe: Healing Bone Broth
Broth is porousness made visible. Minerals and gelatin leach from bone into water, then into your body, then into your cells. It is a metaphor, a ritual, and a foundation.
Ingredients
Bones: 3-4 lbs total. Use a mix for best results:
1 whole raw chicken (3-4 lbs) OR 1-2 chicken carcasses (from roasted chickens)
A few pounds of frozen roasted grass-fed marrow bones
Optional: 2-3 chicken feet (for extra gelatin)
Acid: 1-2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or lemon juice (helps extract minerals)
Aromatics:
1 large onion, quartered (no need to peel)
2-3 carrots, roughly chopped
2-3 celery stalks, roughly chopped
4-6 garlic cloves, smashed
Flavor:
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon whole peppercorns
Fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary - optional, add at end)
Liquid: Cold, filtered water to cover
Seasoning: Good quality sea salt (add at the very end)
Instructions
Roast (Optional but Recommended): If using raw marrow bones, preheat oven to 400°F. Place bones on a baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes until browned. This adds immense depth of flavor.
Combine & Soak: Place all bones (roasted marrow bones, raw chicken, and/or carcasses) in a large stockpot (at least 8 quarts). Add the vinegar or lemon juice and cover everything with cold water, leaving 2 inches of space at the top. Let sit for 30 minutes.
Add Aromatics: Add the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorns.
Bring to a Simmer: Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then immediately reduce to a gentle simmer (small bubbles, not a rolling boil). A rolling boil will make the broth cloudy.
Skim: Skim off any foam or scum that rises to the surface in the first 30 minutes.
Cook the Chicken (If Using Whole Chicken): Simmer for 45-60 minutes. Carefully remove the whole chicken. Let it cool, then pull off all the meat. Use this cooked meat for soups, salads, or tacos.
Return Bones & Simmer: Return the chicken carcass (bones, skin, cartilage) to the pot and continue simmering.
The Long Simmer: Let the broth simmer gently, uncovered or with the lid slightly ajar.
Chicken Bones (total): 4-6 hours
Beef/Marrow Bones (total): 8-24+ hours (The longer it simmers, the more nutrients you extract).
Finish: Add any fresh herbs in the last 30 minutes.
Strain & Season: Strain the broth through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl. Discard the solids. Season the warm broth with salt to taste.
Storage & Use
Refrigerator: Let cool, then store in jars for 5-7 days. A layer of fat will solidify on top; you can remove it or stir it back in. The broth should gel when cold—this is the gelatin, and it's a sign of success!
Freezer: Freeze in portions (wide-mouth mason jars, silicone ice cube trays, or freezer bags) for 3-6 months.
Daily Use:
Sip warm in a mug.
Use instead of water to cook rice, quinoa, or noodles (great for kids!).
Use as a base for any soup, stew, or sauce.
Variations
Instant Pot Version: Same ingredients, but reduce water to just cover. Cook on Manual/High Pressure for 2 hours (for chicken) to 4 hours (for beef), then let it release pressure naturally.
Scraps-Only Broth: Keep onion skins, carrot tops, celery ends, and parsley stems in a freezer bag. When full, add to a pot with leftover bones, cover with water, and simmer. Every batch is unique kitchen alchemy.
Luxury Version: Add 1-2 strips dried kombu (seaweed) for trace minerals, a knob of fresh ginger for digestion, or medicinal mushrooms like reishi or shiitake.
When I make broth, it feels like hitting a reset button. The smell fills my home, grounding me. I keep a jar in the fridge and sip it mid-afternoon instead of reaching for caffeine or sugar. It’s not just food — it’s a signal to my body: you are safe, you are nourished, you can rest.
Making broth is simple, but it’s also radical. To buy the fancy stuff from the store may be expensive, but to use the leftovers from your weekly meals means it is essentially free. In a world of ultra-processed "instant soups," simmering scraps is an act of resistance.
In the next chapter, we’ll see the opposite: what happens when the foundation itself is hijacked. If bone broth is the story of nourishment through time, sugar is the story of how industry learned to mimic, manipulate, and exploit the very edges that keep us alive.
