End of the year thoughts..
This is going to be the last post for 2013.
It has not even be a year since I started this blog, and I have to say it has been quite a journey. I think I finally found a place where all my big passions can come together: food, nutrition, photography and helping others. (Oh and did I mention writing?! Duh! I cannot stand writing!)
Well, I would like to express my gratitude for YOU, who are reading my blog. (there must be at least one or two of you out there…) Thank you for taking time to see what wacky thoughts came through my head and what strange concoctions I manage to produce in my kitchen!
I hope you liked some of this recipes, and I REALLY hope some of them helped you discover a new food, or maybe try an organ meat for the first time, and find it tasty. I also REALLY hope I could show you that your health and the health of our planet are tightly connected, and that every little step to help ’em counts!
Thank you for being my reader, I hope the new year will bring us both more health, more planet friendly habits and MORE GOOD FOOD!
Reducing food waste: A sustainable, thrifty habit!
The last post I published was that incredibly delicious Roast Goat Shoulder. As you can imagine there was a big bone left over from the roast, with a lot of meat still on it, tendon and fat.
Yikes, you might think, but bone, fat and ligament are like 3 magic ingredients to create an elixir of life: roasted bone broth!
So instead of throwing that bone to the trash (landfill) we can make another delicious and healthy dish out of it….and at the end yo can still feed it to the dog!
A bit of nutrition
Put in more prosaic terms, by slow cooking meat and bone in water, by a process called hydrolitic cleavage the nutrients are released from the tissues and dissolved in the water, which will then become the broth you drink! Calcium, potassium, iron from the bones, glucosamine hyaluronic acid, collagen, and gelatin from the cartilage, and more minerals and vitamins from the vegetables…
Mark wrote an entire wonderful blogpost about this, which I recommend reading!
How to transform a bone into the elixir of life!
So there was my nice shoulder bone, well roasted and full of meat! Right as you finish cooking you meat, if you did not deglaze the cooking pan, immediately pour a cup of water on it and let sit until all the brown is dissolved, you might need to put it on the fire for a minute or two.
Now place your bone, plus whatever bits of meat or fat were left into a large stockpot. Add the juices from the deglazed roasting pan and ideally some sweet veggies, as the base for this stock is very sweet. I used some leftover butternut squash from making Paleo pizzas, some carrots, some green onions and a leek. You can be creative, add any kind pumpkin, a turnip, some fresh thyme, a yam, some sweet Maui onions…
The secret ingredient in this recipe is TIME! Put it all in the pot and let it simmer away very slowly for about 8/9 hours, even longer. Make sure you keep the pot covered so none of the precious juice will be lost to evaporation! The broth will boil down from 3/4 quarts to about 2.
If you are as lucky as I am and use a wood stove to heat your house, just place you pot on it and let it simmer for about 24 hours!
- Leftover bones from a roast, in this case goat shoulder
- 2 or 3 green onions
- 3 or 4 medium carrots, washed
- ½ butternut squash, peeled seeded and cut in large pieces
- sea salt to taste
- Put all ingredients in a medium stock pot. (8 quarts)
- Add enough cold water to cover everything, about ¾ quarts.
- Simmer on very low flame for about 8 hours.
I crockpot my broths and boil for a minimum of 2 days – typically 3. Once strained, I puree all the leftover “mash” and bones in my vitamix. Then I use this as a gravy on my dog’s food for the next week. If she hears the blender, she comes running!
That is wonderful Jenny!!