The base of many recipes (soups, stews, and sauces), broths add a depth of flavor that makes the time to prepare them worth it. Broth is also rich in nutrients, offers hydration and electrolytes, and supports joint and gut health.

What Is Broth?

Broths are commonly made from vegetables, meat, or seafood.

What's the Difference Between Broth and Stock?

According to food writer Drew Smith, there’s a difference between broths and stocks: “For me, it is a simple distinction. Broth is what we do at home. Stock is what you make for a restaurant. A good broth should be drinkable as it is.”

Whether you decide to sip broths for health benefits or incorporate them into soups or sauces, making your own is a healthy and satisfying activity.

Types of Broth

• Bone Broth

  This type of broth is made from a simple combination of meat bones (such as beef, chicken, or turkey) and water. Vegetables and other aromatics like herbs, spices, garlic, and onion are sometimes added for flavor.

  Benefits of Bone Broth

  Rich in healing properties, bone broth is a source of nutrients that the body cannot make on its own. The nutrients in bone broth come from the marrow, or soft part of the bone, as well as the outer bone matrix, which is the dense part of the bone.

  Iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and boron are some of the minerals present, depending on the type of broth. Collagen is another nutrient found in bone broth; it helps digestion, encourages wound healing, and promotes healthy skin.

  Making Bone Broth

  Making a quality bone broth takes time: don’t rush the process. Another helpful tip: don’t boil the ingredients. A vigorous boil causes the fat and impurities to mix back into the broth. This makes it harder to skim and discard them from the broth’s surface. When a broth is boiled, its flavors are not extracted as effectively as when the broth is slowly simmered.

  To reach the desired temperature when making a broth, remove the lid or keep the lid slightly tilted so it covers only half the pot. Aim for a few light ripples to appear across the liquid’s surface during the cooking process. If bubbles appear, make sure they’re tiny. Maintain a steady and low heat over medium to medium-low.

  For best flavor, remove any foam or fat that appears on the broth’s surface. A flat spoon works well for this task. Keep in mind that the broth may become cloudy during its first hour of cooking. But after a few skimmings of the surface, the broth should become clearer and take on a golden or brown color. If you don’t skim broth (particularly during the first hour), the broth may develop a bitter taste and be cloudy. Allow the broth to cool slightly before straining it.

• Vegetable Broth

  Simple ingredients like vegetables, herbs, and spices can be transformed into vegetarian broths. Consider pea pods, or even the cooking water from cauliflower or chickpeas, to enhance flavor when making vegetable broths.

  Making Vegetable Broth

  If the vegetables you wish to add are not organically grown, wash and peel them first. Vegetables can be added directly to the cooking water, or they can be sautéed first. The degree to which the vegetables are cooked beforehand influences the broth’s final flavor. If the vegetables are cooked until just limp, there will be a more delicate taste to the broth. If the vegetables are cooked until golden brown in color, a richer flavor will form.

  Leave fresh herb bundles whole, and cut vegetables into large chunks when making vegetable broth. Taste the broth as it is cooking. If the flavor becomes too sweet (from too many carrots) or too strong (from an abundance of herbs), scoop out and discard the potent ingredient(s). Add herbs and spices during the final half hour of cooking.

Tips for Making Better Broth

• Water

  • Use Filtered Water

    For premium flavor and the most health benefits, use filtered water when making broth.

  • Use Enough Water

    Cover ingredients by two inches with water to gently and thoroughly extract flavors from the ingredients.

  • Use Cool-Temperature Water

    Starting off the cooking process with cooler water also ensures bone broths remain clear.

• Seasoning

  • Aromatic Herbs and Spices

    Season bone and vegetable broths with your favorite aromatics, like fresh herbs and whole or ground spices. Consider the following:

    • basil
    • cilantro
    • coriander seeds
    • cumin seeds
    • dill
    • fennel seeds
    • garlic
    • ginger
    • leeks
    • onion
    • oregano
    • parsley
    • peppercorns
    • rosemary
    • sage
    • thyme

  • Consider Vinegar

    Vinegar is another possibility. Apple cider vinegar helps extract more mineral content from the bones when making bone broth.

  • Use Minimal Salt

    When seasoning broths, add a minimal amount of salt during the cooking process. If the broth becomes too salty, it’s impossible to remove it. You can always add more later.

• Storage

  • Store broths, tightly covered, for three days in the refrigerator.
  • Broths may also be frozen up to three months.

The last time you had a cold or the flu, it’s likely someone suggested that chicken soup might help you feel better. It turns out that there’s a lot of truth in that seemingly old-fashioned idea!

Health Benefits of Bone Broth

• Healing Nutrients

  When we’re sick or stressed our bodies are fighting hard, which can cause us to deplete our reserves of key nutrients.

  While bone broth can’t eliminate cold and flu viruses, it naturally contains several minerals and other substances—calcium, chondroitin, glucosamine, magnesium, and zinc—that exhibit powerful anti-inflammatory properties to support healing.

  These same nutrients may also help relieve symptoms associated with autoimmune disorders like asthma and psoriasis. 

• Bone Strength

  It goes without saying that bone broth supports bone health. Packed with bone-repairing calcium and magnesium, broths made from animal bones help maintain and replenish the body’s reserves of these important minerals and keep chronic health conditions like osteoporosis at bay.

• Healthy Digestion

  During the cooking process, cartilage and connective tissue present in bones are reduced to gelatin, which coats the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract.

  The collagen in bone broth also supports the lining of the small and large intestines, which may help ease symptoms of “leaky gut” including food intolerances.

Choosing a Bone Broth

While you can certainly make your own bone broth, if you’re pressed for time, or just not a natural in the kitchen, you might want to buy pre-made bone broth or bone broth powder.

Avoid products that contain MSG or high amounts of sodium.

In today’s world, where everything really, really old is chic again, Paleo enthusiasts don't need to spend hours upon hours simmering bones to make bone broth. They can get their winter brew much more easily—by purchasing it.

Your Ancestors Should Know

There are many examples of people throughout history making hearty broths from boiling bones with assorted meat and vegetable scraps.

Broths have long been essential in Asian cooking—and prescribed in Chinese medicine. Mexicans still eat a stew called pozole that dates to pre-Columbian days. And then, of course, there’s your grandmother’s chicken soup—doled out to battle coughs, sneezes, and fevers.

Long seen as warming and comforting, bone broth—soup made by simmering animal and fish bones, and specifically cartilage, with other ingredients for hours—is hot in more ways than one these days. Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniel, authors of Nourishing Broth: An Old-Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World, tout the healing qualities of bone broth, mentioning conditions including cancer, arthritis, allergies, digestive diseases, and more. “Bone broth, rich in the elements of cartilage, collagen, and healing amino acids, can provide protection from these ailments, can serve as an important element in recovery, and can nourish and enrich our lives in many ways,” they write.

The Goods on Bone Broth

Jenny McGruther, author of The Nourished Kitchen and Broth & Stock, lists bone broth’s benefits on her Nourished Kitchen blog. It’s packed with protein. It’s potentially a source of amino acids including glycine, which supports digestion, and proline, which helps keep skin healthy when paired with vitamin C. The gelatin in bone broth, seen as a key flavor and health feature, also aids digestion, McGruther notes.

Morell and Daniel detail a number of benefits of bone broth in their book, including:

• Its nutrients are easy for the body to absorb.
• It contains glucosamine and chondroitin, which can prompt the growth of new collagen, repair joint damage, and lessen pain and inflammation.
• Its key ingredients—calcium, magnesium, collagen, and phosphorus—can help to grow and repair bones.
• Because the gelatin it contains can protect and repair the mucous lining of the digestive tract, it can help with gut and digestion issues.
• Its collagen and gelatin also support skin, nail, and hair growth.
• Thanks to the calming properties of glycine, it promotes sleep and settles the mind.
• It helps fight off colds and flu.

Another use? The Los Angeles Lakers use bone broth as a sports recovery drink.

Quick and Easy

There are a few ways to enjoy bone broth. If you live near a restaurant or market that sells high-quality broth, then by all means, partake! And if you are handy in the kitchen and able to keep a pot simmering for eight to 24 hours, you can easily find recipes online or in magazines and cookbooks.

One option for people with busy, on-the-go lives is to buy bone-broth powder. Some are made to be added to hot water, the way you would prepare bouillon from a cube, while others can be used like protein powder—stirred into shakes, fruit or vegetable smoothies, or juice.

When you buy bone broth powder, select a brand you respect and read the ingredients. Avoid those that are high in sodium or contain MSG, and look for the ingredients that give bone broth its benefits.

The Upshot

Bone broth is trendy these days, buoyed by endorsements from celebrities like retired LA Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting its benefits, and while its key ingredients have been repeatedly shown to offer nutritional value, no research has been published as yet on the benefits of bone broth itself.

It may not live up to its hype as a cure-all, some scientists have noted, but bone broth has a long-standing history as a comforting and healing food.