4 Working-Mama-Tips For Making Chicken Bone Broth

When I think about all the changes we have made to our diets in the last couple of years, a few stand out as more important than others. Switching from highly processed soybean oil to more stable, less processed fats like coconut oil, butter and lard is on the short list. Also making homemade stock or bone broth has been a game changer for me.

In the beginning I said that I would never make my own stock. I really did!! I was so anxious about the inconvenience of making stock that I clung to my bouillon like Thing 2 to his favorite train. I had made stock before and the result was a weak broth that needed so much salt to taste good that I figured it was easier to keep a couple of cubes on hands. That was until I was introduced to the technique of making bone broth.

To make bone broth one must take bones and simmer them for hours with aromatics like onions, celery, carrots and black peppercorns. Chicken bone broth must be simmered for a minimum for 4 hours. Beef bones must be cooked for closer to 10 or 12 hours. The resulting liquid is a dark colored, cloudy, meaty, gelatin filled elixir. Bone broth is a far cry from all those half assed recipes that call you to cook a whole raw chicken in a pot of water for an hour. Quick broths tend to be clear and even slightly bitter tasting in my opinion. The reward for all those hours spent tending to the pot is a broth so thick with nutrition and protein that it is an excellent support to otherwise meatless meals.

I have made chicken bone broth many times now. And I have done so with everything from a leftover roast bird to raw backs and necks. But my favorite chicken part to use is chicken feet. Chicken feet produce hands down the most flavorful and gelatin rich of all chicken broths. I have finally found a source for feet that is local, pastured and organic. Pastured chickens generally cost around $8 per pound. But the feet are sold off at a slightly lower cost. And fortunately the farm from which I buy my feet will sell a whole bag of feet, so I don’t have to buy a $45 bird just to get two feet for stock! My feet are approximately $6 for one and one half pounds. And that makes about a gallon and a half of stock.

Properly made bone broth should gel when cooled overnight in the refrigerator. If you have followed all the directions here and your broth does not gel then it just has a little too much water in it. Chances are when you use it to make something, like soup, it will gel up nicely after you have cooked with it. When cooking with feet, I have been told that clipping off the nails is super important. However, I generally dump the feet in frozen with no additional prep. I figure they will boil for 6 or so hours and whatever buggies the nails would have would stand no chance. Also, be sure to commit the full time and boil the feet until they are really beginning to break up and fall apart on their own. If your feet still look like they did when you dropped them in, you are throwing away a lot of goodness. If the skin looks ragged and the joints are beginning to come apart, then you have reached the zone. Keep going, it takes at least 4 hours of stovetop simmering to get there and you can easily boil them longer than that. There is no sense in throwing away nourishment!

Bone broth is super easy. But that isn’t why you aren’t currently making it right? You don’t make broth because it takes too long or you aren’t home for long enough periods of time, right? That is certainly what I struggle with. So how does a busy mama work something as simple as bone broth into her already maxed out schedule? I have a couple of tricks to share that make it easier for me to keep this important foodstuff around the house.

1) Save your vegetable scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. Bone broth requires aromatic vegetables be boiled with the bones. But who wants to take great fresh {expensive} veggies, just boil them and finally throw them away? Now I freeze my scraps. When I chop a carrot, the nibs and ends go into my freezer bag instead of the garbage. Same with celery and onion ends. You can even throw onion papers in there. You will end up straining it out so there is nothing wrong with the papers! My freezer bag is where I throw all of the uneaten carrot sticks that come home from Thing 1’s lunch box! I generally save celery, carrots, onions or celery root. More good things to save would be ginger, garlic or garli scapes, leek trimmings, scallions or lemons that you have squeezed. They will of course flavor the broth.

2) Break up your time. Often I am busy or away from the house during the day, even on weekends. So I will start a pot of stock at 6pm and let it boil until 9pm. Before I go to bed I will stick the whole pot in the fridge. The next night I will repeat until the stock has boiled enough. When it comes to stock I am not concerned about the heating and cooling rules that apply to uncooked meats or leftovers. Stock is a food that is boiled at a high temperature for a long period of time. In the cooking phase I don’t worry much about it, and it helps my schedule to where I can make stock on a weeknight!

3) Freeze stock in smaller portions. At the end of the process I will freeze the stock into smaller 2 and 4 cup containers for longer storage. That way I don’t end up thawing and refreezing great blocks of stock. And then I can bring out exactly how much I need, a 2 cup portion for making gravy or rice or a 4 cup portion for making soup. Soup only takes 20-30 minutes with previously prepared broths, yet they taste like they have been cooking for hours! I will use 1 ½ to 2 gallons of water to boil 1 ½ pounds of chicken feet. That yields enough stock for my family for 3 to 4 weeks.

4) Put your crock pot to good use! I do think the stovetop is best. The heat is higher and so the stock bubbles. The bubbles agitate the bones and veggies making them break up and enrich the broth. BUT…I have made great bone broths in the crock pot when I don’t have enough time for a stove top job. I have even started a batch of broth at 9pm and had it cook until 5 or 6am. Then it is waiting for you when you wake up!! I don’t get as gelatin-y of a broth with the crock pot, but finishing it on the stove top might be an answer to that.

Using the above tricks I have managed to keep bone broths regularly on hand and the junk filled cubes out of the house! Considering the extreme cost of ethically raised meats, bone broth is a wonderfully nourishing addition to your diet. Plus the taste is so rich that I can always count on Thing 1 eating whatever veggies that I boil in them. When he takes a hot thermos full of veggie soup to school I always know that he is getting a healthy and nutritious lunch. I am truly thankful that he likes soup as much as he does.

If you are a stressed out lady {or fella} with too many obligations and not enough time to nourish yourself, consider making time to make bone broth. Using the tricks I mention will help to fit the task into your crazy schedule, and the nourishment will support your health!

Enjoy!

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays and Fight Back Fridays

Humble Spuds: How to Perfectly Roast a Potato

When I was a brand new mama, I had to completely relearn how to cook. I realized that pretty quickly. Was it that the only food I ate for the first week of Thing 1's life was cheezits straight from the box? Or was it me in the kitchen trying to mince and sweat onions in a dutch oven while my little red baloney-loaf screamed his head off in the bouncy seat? More than one night ended with both of us hungry and in tears.

It was for this reason that I found 'the walk-away'. 'The walk-away' is when you put something on to cook and instead of sticking around to futz with it you simply...walk away. Don't mess with a sausage frying in a pan. Don't check on boiling or steaming veggies. They really don't need you until they need to be strained. Chicken baking in the oven doesn't need you except for maybe one baste. Just walkaway. Go and nurse the baby, fold the laundry or in my case, put your purse away, change clothes and spend some quality time with the kids. 30 minute meals are awesome, but 45 minute meals with only 10 active minutes are way better.

Granted, the 'walk-away' does require medium heat otherwise you might burn something. I always loved how Emeril Lagasse used to pull the knob off his oven on his Food Network show and tell the audience 'You know these come with knobs for a REASON!!' Medium heat is really the best for the stove-top walk-away.

Now all this leads me to the humble baked potato. Steaming. Buttery. Starchy. Filling. I LOVE baked potatoes. But before I had children I don't think I had had more than two baked potatoes in the prior ten years. Post motherhood I began eating them several times a week because they are the best hot walk-away meal! When I would get home from work I would get Thing 1's dinner together and pop my potato in the oven, maybe with a chicken breast or maybe not. By the time the little bugger collapsed in sleep my spud would be fully cooked and I could start my evening. I have tried lots of different ways of making a baked potato. But I am an exacting lady. I am always looking for the absolute best way to cook simple food. I believe I have perfected my potato baking techniques.

How to Perfectly Bake a Potato

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

First, select a good medium sized potato, one that is longer than it is wide. A good baker is one that feels heavy for its size. I also like potatoes that have a uniform shape, so that it won't be raw on one side while overdone on the other. There is little in life that worse than underdone potatoes. Flat tires maybe, mornings without coffee definitely.

Scrub your potato. I sometimes use soap and even a rough cloth or clean sponge to get it seriously scrubbed. After all, I eat the potato skin. OH! I should have mentioned that sooner. If you are just eating the inside of your taters and tossing the skin then you are missing out. Potato skins are a tremendous source of fiber. But I eat them because they are so delicious. Interesting....In researching this article I discovered that according to The Straight Dope (a website), potato skins contain toxic compounds called glycoalkaloids. Green potatoes especially have these compounds (so don't eat those). But, you have to eat alot to suffer consequences. I have certainly not had any adverse reactions and I have eaten alot of potato skins. While not all the nutrition of a potato is locked in it's skin, they are really tasty. And they do contain lots of billing fiber!!

Take a fork or a sharp knife and poke a couple holes in your potato. It doesn't have to turn into a crime scene. Seven to ten pokes is more than enough to let the steam vent.

Next pour a teaspoon of olive oil into your hand, then massage it into potato. Lastly pop him in the oven and wait 45 minutes or so. Check the doneness of your tuber by squeezing. The outside should be crispy and crackly while the inside should give and feel soft. A larger potato will need an hour and possibly more depending on size.


When your potato is done, eat it right away or else the super crunchy skin will soften and be significantly less delicious. Favorite toppings? Butter, full fat greek yogurt and plenty of sea salt and cracked black pepper (as seen in all the pictures). But also chili and cheese is sublime. I have even been known to whip up a cheese sauce and soften some vegetable up in there. Cheese sauce, green beans and broccoli to smother a perfectly baked potato? Delish.

Definitely try the walkaway. And definitely enjoy your potatoes!

This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursdays

On Flowering Tomatoes and Daughters

My indoor gardening idea was a 'get tomatoes quick' scheme at best. I have invested about $100 so far, and I guess that you could say that I didn't buy a pair of shoes (or two) this summer to offset the costs, so I am not crying over the loss of $100. But still, $100 is nothing to sniff at and I really want some tomatoes for some return on investment.

Since I started the great indoor gardening project I have watched these plants quadruple in size, bend upward toward the sun and put out several flowers. The red fruited 'Abe Lincoln' has put out a couple dozen flowers so far, with only 7 or 8 actually growing big enough to open. The yellow fruited 'Yellow Oxheart' has also put out a couple dozen flowers too, but they have all stayed small and tight. I think that my little yellow dear may not be getting enough sun since it is further in the corner. I moved the rack to a sunnier patch to oblige the plant.

With all this fertility and flowering I can't help but think of these plants as being female. I like to refer to them as a couple of 'shes' and they remind me of the irregular young girl in the first year of getting her menstrual cycle. Their little plant bodies are struggling to make babies and only producing dying flowers. And since I have no daughters who will one day grow up and need my loving guidance as they become women, maybe I am acting out through these plants a great void in my heart to help a young girl grow up. Remember when Rudy Huxtable got her period on the Cosby Show? I always imagined having a daughter. And when her time came I would keep her out of school for the first day after and we would go have lunch somewhere fancy in midtown, get manicures and go shopping at Sak's to celebrate her crossing over into womanhood. Now all I have to fulfill those dreams is a couple of irregular tomato plants that can't quite make tomatoes.

An astute reader commented in the first post about my indoor gardening that perhaps the plants needed bees? I foolishly believed that I could just BE the BEE. I could tap the flowers and polinate them. I mean, have you SEEN a flower? The stamen sticks out and all these dusty pods float in the breeze just begging to knock the plant up. I had it all worked out in my head. Then the first little flowers opened and I realized the trouble. A tomato flower comes in two parts, the outer flower that looks like a regular flower and then this, rather surprising to me, inner flower that covers the stamen and all the pollen bits.

I looked at the flower and thought, 'Ok, what the hell do I do now?' Before I left on vacation I had 3-4 flowers that were open. I had planned on gently tapping them to pollinate them, but clearly I was going to have to be more...invasive. I pinched them, but I didn't see any pollen fall out. I tapped the flowers from the back. I didn't know what to expect. I left on vacation hoping to come home to little green knobs.

What did I come home to? 4 new flowers and a couple dead flowers on the floor. Boo. So I looked online and found this website on how to pollinate indoor tomatoes. This website recommends getting an electric toothbrush and gently massaging the nearby support stems. Apparently the frequency of the vibrations loosens the pollen in the inner flower helping it to fall down and pollinate. An electric toothbrush? For real? I am starting to feel like I have crossed the line with this project into 'ridiculous territory'. I don't want to spend one more dime, but on the other hand if I don't see it all the way through then my entite initial investment is down the drain. What a conundrum! I decided to gently massage my plants with my fingers. I am making sure to ever so carefully tap the support stems on which the flowers are. I am trying to imitate the movement that the toothbrush would provide. And I am sure that I have now completely lost it.

I guess in a couple days I will know if I have ruined another batch of flowers and I need to buy an electric toothbrush. But I must see this through to the end. After all, I am the only mommy that my little girls have got.

Now don't get me wrong, having boys is awesome. Awesomer than I could have ever imagined. And rather than helping them become women (obviously), I am teaching them what to expect from women and how to have proper inter-gender relationships. I feel that it is my responsibility even at their young age to teach them to develop a healthy marriage by building great external friendships. But we want what we want. I remember the day the ultrasound clinician told me that Thing 2 was a boy. I was laying flat on my back and I truly believed that if I adjusted my head properly my two fat tears might roll back into my tears ducts from where they'd sprung. Since then I have reconciled my feelings. My desire for a daughter does not reflect upon my love for my boys at all. One has nothing to do with the other. And I don't feel guilty at all about my want of a daughter. But a Thing 3 is not looking so likely. So until we hit the lottery or I sell a book idea, I think that I will focus my attention on my tomato plants.

Read the first post here: The Hanging Gardens of Washington Heights

Read the next post here: And Just Like That We Have A Tomato

This post is shared with Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays and Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food Wednesdays

I Thought I Knew How to Wash Vegetables

I found myself in a slightly awkward situation a few days ago. And let me preface this by saying that those with whom I was talking probably didn’t find the situation awkward at all. I was discussing with some folks about how to wash vegetables, when a good friend asked me, ‘Why do you soak your produce in vinegar diluted in water? Will it really remove the pesticide residues any better?’ I stuttered a half confident ‘I heard it from a friend’.

Now that wasn’t an answer that I was happy about! I like to think of myself as being a researcher and having a mind of my own. I like to think that I will confirm anything I hear out there with some trustworthy report. I want to believe that I will truly understand the reasons why I do the things that I do. That is what builds confidence. People who read this blog don’t just want to hear what I do with food. They want to hear why I do something with my food.
It is likely that people reading wash their produce in many varying ways. Some may scrub. Others soak. Some many wipe food on their clothes (no joke), while others mist with a mister. Some people buy those veggie washes. But there are some things you need to know about washing fruits and veggies.

· There are three things (and maybe more) that you need to be concerned about washing off your fruits and veggies when you get them home: dirt left over from growth, bacteria picked up either from the dirt or through transportation/ handling and pesticide residues. I don’t always buy organic produce. But even when I do, I always wash my fruits and veggies.

· Veggie washes aren’t worth the money. As NPR reported in 2007, Cooks Illustrated Magazine did an analysis of various cleaning methods and they found that veggie washes did little more than simply washing in plain water.

· That same analysis showed that veggie scrub brushes did remove slightly more bacteria than simple washing.

· But the best results were obtained from washing fruits and veggies with a solution of one parts vinegar (they used white vinegar) and 3 parts distilled water.

I thought the distilled water bit was interesting. Distilled water has had all the bacteria and living bits removed in the distilling process, thus you will be less likely to contaminate your fruits and veggie with something that was found in the water itself. But my first impression? I drink my tap water. So I run no greater risk of polluting my veggies with ickies than when I drink a glass of water. However, you might not feel so confident about your tap water…and I get that. I am not going to be buying distilled water just to wash my veggies.

The article said that it was not necessary to soak fruits and vegetables in water before storing them. And again, I get that. But I have had GREAT results through soaking. What I typically do when I get home from the market is to scrub my sink with soap and warm water (including the opening of the drain!) and rinse thoroughly. I then fill the sink up with cold water and add in some apple cider vinegar (previously I have been adding a few tablespoons but as a result of reading the article I will probably start adding a cup or so). I let my fruits and veggies soak for 30 minutes to an hour. I agitate them during the soaking so that all dirt and residue is removed. Then I remove them from the water, shake them off and let them drip dry on a clean dish towel. As I have mentioned before, I store most of my veggies in plastic bags in the fridge. Lettuce I like to store in a big glass Tupperware. With spinach I will often remove the stems before storage.

Fruits and veggies I soak: all greens, carrots, green beans, leeks and scallions, apples, pears, potatoes, grapes, stone fruits

Fruits and veggies that I rinse just prior to eating: all berries, anything bagged in plastic or otherwise washed before prepackaging

Fruits and veggies that I don’t wash at all: bananas, sweet potatoes, avocados, onions, oranges (all items that I NEVER eat the outer layer)

**As a note about pesticide residues. I found an interesting article on the WH Foods website that stated that one can remove most pesticide residue through washing and soaking, but not everything. And one cannot remove the pesticides that have been incorporated in the plant itself. I eat a lot of organic food, but I am not maniacal about it. Almost all the local fruit in my farmer’s market is sprayed with something! And I still prefer local to trucked in.My mantra is limit your exposure through buying some organics and washing the rest and then letting go and accepting the limitations of this life!