Recipe - Pork Bone Broth

Slow cooker Pork bone broth. Have you heard about bone broths? I saw a show on them some time back and it seemed to say that people were selling bone broth as some kind of substitute for your morning coffee. I think I still need caffeine to get me through to be honest. Having said that there are supposed to be some health benefits and at worst I will at least have some nice stock to use when making soups and the like over the next little while. The whole process is cheap and I intend to heat a mug of broth up in the morning to see if it is a nice thing to start the day. I did search Coles supermarket online and they are stocking a Campbell's bone broth in both chicken and beef and charging $7 for a half litre. The pork bones and and hock at my local butcher were selling for $4 / kg so I grabbed a kilogram of bones plus a couple of Pork hocks which set me back $6.80. I then ducked into the fruit and veggie shop and grabbed a soup packet mix containing Carrot, onion and celery for $1 and with that I had enough ingredients to make a simple pork bone broth. 

Ingredients:

1 kg Pork bones

2 pork hocks

2 onions

2 carrots

2 celery stalks

Oil to grease baking tray

Method:

 1. Lightly oil a baking tray and top with roughly chopped vegetables and the bones and hocks. Roast in a preheated 200ºC for 30 minutes or until the bones and vegetables are nicely browned. To be honest I was tempted to roast either at a little higher temperature or a for a longer time but thing I got the balance right. Why do we brown the stock ingredients first? Simple, flavour. Browning will give the stock more of a kick.

2. Transfer the the contents of the tray to your slow cooker and cover with 2 litres of water. Yes, you could simmer your stock on the stove-top but then you will need to pay more attention to it during cooking. In my case I have switched the slow cooker to high and will turn it to low when I go to bed. When I wake in the morning the stock will have been cooking for about 15 hours. At this point I am tempted to keep it on low whilst I am at work tomorrow which will mean that the stock will have simmered for around 27 hours by the time I strain it and have it ready to use tomorrow evening.  

3. The process is a little too easy to describe. After the allotted time simply strain the liquid and jar for storage. to use as a hot beverage I simply filled a microwave safe cup and buzzed it in the microwave for 2 minutes. The broth is great as an internal warmer on a cold winter's morning and I seems to be quite effective in reducing food craving throughout the day. I highly recommend giving it a go and adding bone broth to your morning routine.