What Happened When I Tested a Bone Broth Recipe?
Attempting to make bone broth using my electric stove was not fruitful due to the lack of temperature control. As a result, I could only simmer the liquid for a few hours before it dried up. Without the anticipated broth, the next best thing was to eat the meat, cartilage, etc., off the bones.
Here are links to my two pursuits at making bone broth:
Recently, I’ve been reading more about how to achieve better health and came across multiple articles about the benefits of bone broth.
My Story
Growing up, my parents regularly simmered stock for hours to use for our soups. Hoping for a tasty, warm bowl of broth, I decided to try and make bone broth.
Inspiring Recipe
I found a couple of bone broth recipes, but Bone Broth from Nourished Kitchen sounded more flavorful because it called for roasted bones.
On a side note, the article also contained useful information about the bone broth, e.g., its nutrients, tips on choosing the bones, and the difference between bone broth and stock.
First Try
I was looking forward to some tasty bone broth from bone-in pork hocks!
Ingredients to Use
Due to the weight of the hocks available at the supermarket, I had to increase the recipe from making 8 servings to 11 servings (from 3 to 4 lbs of hocks).
Also, I used cooking rice wine and garlic flavored extra virgin olive oil instead of white wine and extra virgin olive oil because those items were what I had at home.
Steps to Prepare
Of the five steps in the recipe, I had to tweak two of them based on availability and convenience. First, I lined a baking pan with foil instead of a baking sheet with parchment paper. Even though the hocks were stuck to the foil, I was able to scrape them off with little effort. Unfortunately, I forgot to capture photos of the roasted hocks.
As for bringing the pot to a boil over medium high heat and immediately turning it down to low, I brought the liquid to a boil on high heat and turned it down to low, but had to turn it back to medium high heat when the liquid stopped simmering. After only 3 hours, the liquid was almost all evaporated, so I decided to taste test what I had and try again next time.
Time to Eat
After tasting the pork, it didn’t need any additional salt since the cooking rice wine already had sodium.
Here are a couple of photos of what was left after my family’s tasting:
Recipe Rating
Even though I didn’t get the broth that I had anticipated, the gravy had a nice, strong pork flavor and the meat/skin came off the bones easily.
Here are the results of the recipe:
| Number of Ingredients | Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏) | Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰) | Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6️⃣ | 🤏 | 💰 | 😋 |
The bonus was that my family enjoyed these hocks as well!
Second Try
Based on the results of the first attempt, I wanted to do the following this time:
- Coat the foil in the pan with oil, so the roasted meat/bones don’t stick to the foil.
- After bringing the pot to medium high heat, gradually lower the heat while keeping the pot simmering, instead of immediately changing the setting to low.
Ingredients to Use
Since beef hindshanks were on sale for $4.99/lb at the supermarket, I bought those for this experiment. In addition, because I used up all the cooking rice wine last time, I swapped it out with apple cider vinegar instead since I saw multiple recipes using this. An example would be in an article by Kayla McDonell, RD, Bone Broth: How to Make It and 6 Reasons Why You Should on the Healthline website.
Steps to Prepare
After making changes to the steps and ingredient as noted above during the second try, I still found myself battling with the heat and liquid control.
With a goal of keeping the liquid simmering after bringing it to a boil, I did the following, but never reached 8 hours of simmering time:
- Changed the heat to medium
- Added 6 cups of boiled water after 2.5 hours of boiling to replenish the evaporated liquid and changed the temperature to medium low
- Added 5.5 cups of boiled water after another 2 hours to replace the depleted liquid and changed the heat closer to low
- Lowered the setting even more later
- Increased the heat a little on medium low because the pot stopped simmering
Time to Eat
After adding some salt to the shanks, they were ready for tasting.
Recipe Rating
Here are the results of the modified recipe after the second attempt:
| Number of Ingredients | Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏) | Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰) | Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7️⃣ | 🤏 | 💰 | 🙂 |
Even though there was no bone broth from the shanks, I’ll still play around with this recipe in the future.
For the next time, I will try to make bone broth by incorporating the following steps:
Continuous Improvement
- Include both joint bones and meat, e.g., pork trotters and hocks for more gelatin.
- Use a gas stove for more control of the heat level.
- Go back to using cooking rice wine instead of apple cider vinegar for better taste.
Even though I haven’t reached the goal of the recipe, I still learned the following:
Lesson for Dumber Self
- Don’t multi-task, so you have one primary focus, i.e., monitoring the liquid in the pot!
What will you do now?
Next Step for You
- Read more about bone broth in the article from Nourished Kitchen?
- Share with us your tips on making bone broth?
- Read another post on this site? (Go to the menu at the top of the page.)