Medicine Broth

When the colds or weird viruses are going around, drink one to two cups of Medicine Broth a day. I like to start my day with a warm cup of Medicine Broth and then drink another cup in the afternoon as a pick-me-up.

We all know about soup stock or chicken broth that you can purchase at the store or make yourself. There is soup broth or stock and then there is…

Medicine Broth

Medicine Broth is filled with organic bones, mineral rich vegetables, digestive supporting spices and healing herbs. Making Medicine Broth is similar to making soup stock or bone broth, the difference is the addition of herbs and seaweed.

This is a recipe we have been making for decades in our house. If someone starts to not feel well, we go back to basics, Medicine Broth for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You don’t have to not feel well to drink it though, it is a wonderful medicinal broth that you can drink anytime. You can make a big batch and store it in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Medicine Broth is full of readily available nutrition that the body doesn’t have to spend a lot of effort to harness. Easy to access nutrition means that instead of spending so much energy to digest food, your vitality can be focused on restoring tissue, building immunity or fighting off sickness.

Bones

Collagen, gelatin and protein rich bones made into broth provide deep, easy to digest nutrition.

If purchasing chicken or turkey bones from the store, ask the butcher to cut the leg bones in half so that the marrow is exposed and will easily infuse into your broth.

You can use leg, back, neck, feet and knuckle bones from turkey, chicken and duck.

The primary animal bones that I use for Medicine Broth are chicken, turkey, duck and beef. Other possibilities are ham hocks, pork neck bones, lamb bones, beef shanks and oxtail.

You can purchase these bones from the butcher and then put them straight into your pot for making Medicine Broth.

The other think you can do is use the bones from any meat you eat. You can use bones after the meat has been cooked and eaten off the bones.

Bones that are cooked tend to have a little more flavor. After you eat a turkey, chicken or duck, use the entire carcass for your Medicine Broth.

Also, bones that you bring home from the butcher can be roasted to add more flavor to the broth. The bones need to be from grass fed animals or animals raised without antibiotics and chemicals.

When we make broth from the bones, we receive the gift of protein, collagen and gelatin from the animal bones as raw material to create healthy cells within our own body. This nutrition is dense and bone broth is a restorative food.

Click here to listen to Sally Fallon lay it down about bone broth!

If you would like a vegetarian version, you can follow the recipe and leave out the bones.

Acidic Addition

An acidic ingredient, like wine, apple cider vinegar or lemon, acts like a solvent, helping to break down protein, collagen and pull minerals from the bones into the broth.

Vegetables and Vegetable Scraps

Save your veggie scraps in the freezer until you are ready to make Medicine Broth. Onion peels, garlic peels, leek tops, parsley stems, carrot tops… Store them in a bag in the freezer and add them along with some fresh vegetables to your broth. Use a variety of vegetables for your broth. Make sure some of those root vegetables find their way into the pot, things like turnip, rutabaga, celery root, carrot or parsnip.

Sea Vegetables

Loaded with vitamins and minerals, sea vegetables are the perfect addition to your Medicine Broth. Pick the kind you like, wakame and kombu are my favorite. Seaweed contains protein, a broad range of vitamins and minerals including iron and calcium. It’s known to be a powerful antioxidant and beneficial pre-biotic that supports gut health and immunity.

Mushrooms

If you can find fresh maitake or shiitake mushrooms, add an extra layer of nutrition and immune boosting support.

Herbs and Spices

Adding more minerals, immune building benefits and hundreds of effects that the herbs have in the body, these are some of the herbs that can be added to your Medicine Broth: astragalus, bay leaf, burdock root, calendula blossoms, codonopsis, ginger, reishi, garlic, rosemary, sage, star anise pods, thyme, turmeric.

Fresh Herb Garnish

Garnish with parsley, arugula or cilantro.

Cooking Pot

As far as what you cook it in, that is also personal preference. For years I cooked my bone broths overnight for 8 to 12 hours. Have you ever been woken up in the night from bone both aroma wafting through your house? I have a student, her partner just couldn’t take it anymore and said no more bone broth cooking in their house.

Well, those days are over. For whatever reason, it only took me a couple decades, but I finally discovered the pressure cooker. 3 years ago I purchases a Fagor one pot with a pressure cooker setting and life has never been the same. Excellent bone broth in 4 hours.

Wow, when I made my first batch in 4 hours, I felt part of me saying, “Hey, we have done it the other way for so long, not sure if we like this new-fangled method…”. Hahaha! No more bone broth smell in the middle of the night, it truly was a game changer.

I am giving a base line recipe here for the Medicine Broth. The truth is though, I don’t think I have ever made a broth the same way twice. Use the bones you can find, change up the veggies and herbs depending on the season and what you have available.

This isn’t an exact science. Once you have your bones, see what else you feel drawn to adding. Once you start adding things like reishi and burdock, the flavor can become a little bitter. I just wanted to say one more time, this isn’t the stock that I use for making soups. This is a Medicine Broth, meant to be taken on its own. We drink this one warm cup at a time as a nourishing medicinal food.

If you are ready to take your herbal kitchen to the next level, you can join me at My Herbal Kitchen.