Bone Broth: Eat This Super Food to Improve Your Fertility!
If you’ve been trying to get pregnant, chances are your acupuncturist has recommended that you drink one cup of bone broth daily to help build up your “kidney” function. You don’t know what that means, but you’ve bought several brands from the grocery store. If none of them is appetizing to drink on its own, don’t worry, we’ve got some ideas for you! It’s worth the effort, because bone broth is ultra-nourishing to your fertility. Read on to learn how to add this superfood into your daily nutrition plan and give your fertility a big boost.
The easiest way to incorporate bone broth daily is to drink it straight – maybe drink it in the morning for breakfast or a mid-morning snack. But if you don’t like the taste of the bone broth, you can add a little bouillon to the bone broth to make it more palatable.
You can also use bone broth in your cooking. Often, when a (savory) recipe calls for water to be added, you can substitute bone broth. You can cook your rice or pasta in bone broth, or you can braise your vegetables in bone broth. It makes a great base for soup or stew. If bone broth is too rich for a particular recipe, substitute part of the water with broth.
You can make your own bone broth with your left-over meat or poultry bones and vegetable scraps (soupy-vegetables like onions, celery, leeks, fennel, parsnips, carrots, potato peels, a few carrot tops, left over parsley, etc.). This gives you a lot more control over how your bone broth tastes, how salty it is, which herbs and spices are included. If you make a low-seasoning base broth, it’s very flexible for all the cooking applications mentioned above, and when you want to use it in a soup, you can add additional salt and seasonings. The recipe below is a bit complicated, but once you know how you like to make it, it’s quite easy.
Whenever you have leftover bones or vegetables, put them in the freezer in gallon-sized freezer bags. Make sure the bones are cool first so you don’t allow plastic chemicals to leech into your food. Collect about one gallon-sized freezer bag of vegetable matter and about a third of a gallon-size bag of bones. You can also buy broth bones at many grocery stores if you need to.
Add the vegetables and bones to a big soup pot with one gallon of water and 1-2 Tablespoons of vinegar. Optional: You can add a few pieces of kombu, a little salt, and 1-2 bay leaves.
Bring to a boil, then simmer on the stove for 24 hours, stirring occasionally. Or you can put all the ingredients into a pressure cooker on high pressure for two hours (natural release at the end). If using a pressure cooker, you may need to adjust the amounts, just keep the ratios: 1 part bones to 3 parts vegetable matter and 3 parts water.
Cool to the point that it’s easy to handle, then strain the broth through a sieve into a big mixing bowl (or another soup pot). The solids are compostable.
Put the broth into the fridge so the fat solidifies, then skim the fat off the surface. You can use the fat in recipes instead of oil or compost it. After skimming off the fat, freeze in small batches of 1-2 cups or giant ice cubes (I like the silicone ice cube containers with covers, then I just take out one ice cube every day).
Pro Tip: Dilute the broth when you’re ready to drink it with an equal part water. You can do this to your own taste. You can also add a little salt, to taste. It’s that easy. Enjoy this fertility superfood!
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