The key word in cooking your broth is simmer, not boil. If you boil on high for too long long, the meat seizes up and will get tough. If you start the heat to boil, and bring it down to allow broth to simmer, you extract more of the benefits of the bones inside, not only saving the meat for the soup to eat, but more importantly, collecting the nutrients, therefore the benefits of making bone broth in the first place.
I know it's hard to wait for a soup to cook until its ready, but that perfume of soup wafting in the kitchen is a clarifying incense for my brain. I can really settle in to write, read, and nap, knowing there's some magic afoot, simmering slowly on very low heat on my stove or even in my crock pot (another great utensil to make stock and broth!) After several hours (some recommend a minimum of 6) once you strain out the veggies and meat, you can let the broth simmer until it reduces down and you have stock for gravy, sauce, and flavoring for pilaf, pasta, vegetables and a whole variety of dishes that we normally use that carton of Swanson's broth or those cubes of Herb-ox for. Or you can use it to make soup for that night, adding your favorites like noodles, meat, seafood and vegetables. Once you take it off the heat and allow it to cool to just about room temperature, you can freeze it into cubes in your freezer tray or bag it in freezer bags and use as needed.
I usually add only a dash of salt when I am making a stock. Since you are boiling down and concentrating the flavors of the broth's meats and vegetables, you are also concentrating the salt in the dish as well. Rule of thumb - if you're making soup, season to taste while cooking. If you're making stock, use a light hand with your salt shaker.
Since I am an omnivore, I use bones from chicken, fish and beef. For those interested in making fish broths, adding the head of a fish to the pot gives the broth extra collagen/fish oil oomph. Just make sure you bundle up your fish carcass in some cooking muslin, or cheesecloth so you don't have to fish for bones in your pot, or use a good tight strainer to clear out the bones and seasoning veggies.
To recap, here are the basics:
1) Broth is a liquid made from the long simmering of the bones and meaty parts of animals - fowl, fish and mammal along with savory vegetables. Stock is the concentration of a broth, cleared of its component solid ingredients after they have been thoroughly released, used for flavoring other soups.
2) Once you have attained a boil, never allow your broth-stock pot go above a simmer (it's the next to lowest setting on my burner).
3) Always add an acidic element (preferably cider vinegar) to facilitate release of bone nutrients.
4) Collagen is your friend. After you have chilled your broth, appreciate the gelatin (collagen) you create when making and eating these broths. That means those hours of waiting have paid off and you have been successful in your broth-making. Collagen is gold. That gelatin is rich with the gut-soothing, joint healing, soul soothing medicine available to the body principally through its ingestion as a broth, which according to TCM, is the only way to do it.
Here are some broth combinations that are part of my repertoire, built from family memory. I'm sure you'll recognize them:
1 whole chicken, cut up, fresh, one "hand" of ginger, crushed, salt, vinegar.
3 good sized beef soup bones, roasted in the oven (if they have marrow, all the better!), celery, onion, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorns, dash salt, vinegar.
Beef oxtails, ginger, onions, salt, pepper, bay leaf.
Roasted Turkey carcass, carrots, celery, onions, garlic, salt and pepper.
There were so many websites on the benefits of bone broths that it was almost overwhelming. Here are a few that inspired me to write this, and incorporate bone broths as part of my weekly diet. Check them out. They go into greater scientific detail about the many health benefits of bone broths.
Jade Institute
Doctor Auer
Divine Health from the Inside Out
Let's face this fall with a few more bowls in our arsenal to stay well and healthy this season, especially those of us out there trying to get out the vote. We need all of us to be well -- spiritually, financially, politically and physically -- and win this thing. Nurture yourselves and stay healthy. It's the one true wealth we have.