How to Make Beef Bone Broth

Cody is on day four hundred and eighty-seven. AP English Literature was Wednesday and AP US History was Friday and both went well. Mr. Briggs found me in the hallway after AP English on Wednesday afternoon and he said, very quietly, with the particular Mr. Briggs gentleness, Kaylee, you wrote the kind of essay this exam exists to find.

The exam wants a five-paragraph response on a passage. I had written six paragraphs. The passage was a short scene from a novel I had not read but recognized the shape of, about a woman in a kitchen at the end of a long day, and the question wanted us to analyze how the author used routine and repetition to argue something about survival. I had used the kitchen as a structural metaphor for the argument — the way the woman’s repeated motions at the stove were the literal embodiment of the routine the passage was claiming kept her alive — and Mr. Briggs said the rubric will love it. The scores arrive in July. The college admissions advantage if I score a five on either exam is going to translate to credit hours at the University of Tulsa next fall. The math on the test fees Mama paid in March is going to come back if I score well.

And Mother’s Day is Sunday May thirteenth, four days from now. I have been planning Mama’s third Mother’s Day brunch for three months. The first Mother’s Day in 2016 was a sheet-pan stir-fry I had saved up for two dollars a week for five weeks. The second in 2017 was the cooking class where Mama taught me Grandma Carol’s chicken and dumplings. This year is eggs Benedict, the recipe I read about in Family Circle in 2017 in the same pile that gave me the chicken shawarma in week one of the notebook, the recipe I have been holding for six years for the right Sunday morning. I have been practicing poached eggs at the kitchen counter all week. The first three poached eggs Tuesday morning fell apart in the water like sad eggy clouds. The fourth held. The fifth held. The sixth held cleanly. I am going to be ready Sunday.

And the recipe today is Instant Pot beef bone broth, which I made Saturday afternoon from the bones of the pot roast Mrs. Tilford had donated. I want to write down where the bones came from because the bones are part of the story of how the kitchen at home and the kitchen at the church have become the same kitchen across the years.

Mrs. Tilford runs the cooking-volunteer rotation for the First Baptist Wednesday-night fellowship dinners. The Wednesday dinners feed about forty people each week, mostly older church members and a few of the families with kids in the after-school program. The kitchen volunteers cook a Wednesday-night meal in the church basement on a rotation. This Wednesday Mrs. Tilford had been on the rotation for a pot roast dinner. She had asked Mr. Carl, the head of the kitchen rotation, if she could trim the bones from the chuck roasts after the cooking and save them for me. Mr. Carl said yes. Mrs. Tilford had three pounds of beef bones in a brown paper bag for me on Tuesday afternoon when she brought them over.

The bones were the start. The bone broth recipe is from A Family Feast and uses the Instant Pot to compress what a stovetop simmer takes twenty-four hours to do into eight pressure-cooked hours. You roast the bones at 425 for thirty minutes first to develop color and flavor — do not skip the roast; raw-bone broth is sad pale water, roasted-bone broth is the deep mahogany-brown that bone broth is supposed to be. You transfer the roasted bones to the Instant Pot with quartered onion, halved carrots, halved celery, smashed garlic, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, peppercorns, bay leaves, and water to cover by an inch.

The technique I want to keep is the apple cider vinegar. The vinegar is the trick that separates a real bone broth from a sad bone soup. The acid in the vinegar pulls minerals from the bones — calcium, magnesium, phosphorus — into the broth during the long pressure-cook. The minerals are a small part of the broth’s flavor and a large part of why bone broth has been called medicinal for two centuries. Two tablespoons of cider vinegar per gallon of water. Do not skip.

You pressure cook on high for four hours, natural release. You pressure cook for another four hours, natural release. (The Instant Pot has a maximum pressure-cook time of about four hours per cycle on most models, so the eight hours is two cycles back-to-back.) You strain the broth through a fine mesh sieve into a large bowl. You cool, refrigerate overnight, skim the fat off the top in the morning — the cold fat lifts off in a clean disk and goes into a small jar in the fridge for cooking with later. You have eight cups of deep mahogany-brown bone broth.

I am freezing six cups in two-cup portions in freezer-bags labeled Beef Broth May 2018 with a Sharpie. The two cups not frozen are going to make a small soup tonight for the Wednesday dinner Mama and I are having before her shift. Bone broth, leftover shredded beef from the church-pot-roast donation, fresh thyme, a small handful of egg noodles, salt, pepper. The kind of soup the body is going to thank me for in twenty minutes.

Mama said when she had a small bowl of the broth Saturday afternoon with a few chopped chives, baby, this is medicine. The bone broth is going to be a household staple now. The freezer is going to have two-cup portions of it from now on. The math on what I would have paid for eight cups of grass-fed bone broth at the fancy market in Tulsa is about $48; my cost was the cider vinegar and the electricity for the Instant Pot, maybe $0.30 total. The bones were the gift. The gift was the thing.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the apple cider vinegar — do not skip it. The acid pulls the minerals from the bones into the broth and is the difference between a real bone broth and a sad bone soup. Roast the bones at 425 for thirty minutes before pressure-cooking; raw-bone broth lacks the depth. Pressure-cook in two four-hour cycles; the Instant Pot has a max-time-per-cycle that requires the back-to-back approach. Refrigerate overnight, skim the fat, freeze in two-cup portions. The math is unbeatable.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 12-24 hours | Total Time: 12-24 hours | Servings: 10 (about 10 cups)

Ingredients

4 pounds beef bones (a mix of marrow bones and knuckle bones)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, quartered
2 large carrots, cut into chunks
3 celery stalks, cut into chunks
4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
4-5 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)
A small handful of fresh parsley stems
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
12-16 cups cold water

Instructions

Roast the bones. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Spread the beef bones on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for 30-40 minutes, turning once, until deeply browned. This step builds the rich color and flavor of the broth.
Add the vegetables. For the last 15 minutes of roasting, add the onion, carrots, and celery to the baking sheet alongside the bones. Let them caramelize and char at the edges.
Transfer to the pot. Move the roasted bones and vegetables to a large stockpot or Dutch oven. Pour a splash of water onto the hot baking sheet and scrape up the browned bits with a wooden spoon. Add that liquid to the pot—those browned bits are flavor.
Add aromatics and water. Add the garlic, apple cider vinegar, peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, and parsley stems. Pour in enough cold water to cover the bones by about an inch. The vinegar helps draw minerals from the bones.
Bring to a simmer. Set the pot over medium-high heat and bring to a gentle boil. Immediately reduce heat to the lowest setting so the liquid barely bubbles. Skim off any foam or scum that rises to the surface during the first 30 minutes.
Simmer low and slow. Let the broth simmer, partially covered, for at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours. Check occasionally to make sure the liquid stays at a bare simmer and add more water if the bones become exposed.
Strain and season. When the broth is deep brown and richly flavored, remove from heat. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl or container, discarding the solids. Season with salt to taste.
Cool and store. Let the broth cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. A layer of fat will solidify on top—leave it as a seal until you’re ready to use the broth, then scrape it off or stir it in. Store in the refrigerator for up to 5 days or freeze for up to 6 months.

Nutrition (per serving)

How to Make Beef Bone Broth — The Eight-Hour Instant Pot Version from Donated Bones