I have been sharing in my several posts in the past about the health benefits of bone broth, as well as an easy recipe if you want to make bone broth at home. But what is a meat stock and what's the difference between the bone broth and meat stock? I will cover this below and share a recipe for making your own meat stock.
Bone broth is made using bones with little or no meat and cooked for 12 to 24 hours or even longer depending on the bones. Longer cooking time extracts more nutrients from the bones and tissues. Bone broth is known to be a great gut healing food as well as supportive for the immune health, skin health and more.
Bone broth is richer in minerals in addition to the amino acids found in meat stock. But bone broth is high in histamine and glutamates due to long cooking time- therefore could affect people with histamine intolerance. High concentration of glutamic acid may be problematic for some people- like people with ADHD, autism, MS or other neurological diseases.
Meat stock is made using meaty bones, different parts of the animal and cooked for 1.5 hours to 3.5 hours depending on the meat. Meat stock is considered even better for healing gut lining and ulcerations in the gut. It contains a good amount of gelatine and two very important amino acids, glycine and proline, which are part of all the connective tissues in our bodies and are like the glue that holds our bodies together. The gelatinous protein from the meat and these amino acids are particularly beneficial in healing and strengthening connective tissue such as found in the lining of the gut, respiratory tract and blood/brain barrier.
Making meat stock is very easy. You can make it from beef, lamb, chicken, fish etc. With the below recipe I used different parts of beef, but you can take for example a whole chicken and make a meat stock out of that. This will also give you a lot of cooked chicken to use in other meals. When you have access to organic meat, pasteurised meat- the better the nutrition of the meat stock. To make the meat stock as nutritious as possible, it's good to use different parts from the animal. Like with chicken meat stock, also add chicken feet, chicken neck. Bones that contain bone marrow, cartilage, and connective tissues are best- important is to use meat that is close to a joint as this meat is very gelatinous, which is the most healing property of the stock.
You can also add vegetables like onions, garlic, carrots, celery, ginger, parsley or cook the meat on its own. To help to draw the nutrients from the bones, add apple cider vinegar and salt.
When you are done cooking your meat stock, you can take the bones and cook your bone broth from those.
Meat stock recipe
5L of meat stock
Ingredients
Different parts of meat, with bones, including tailbones, bone marrow
Filtered water
1tbsp of sea salt
2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
If you want to add vegetables (carrots, celery, onion, garlic) to the meat stock, add those coarsely chopped in as well
Parsley
Instructions
Rinse the meat pieces, dry them and cut into the joints with a knife. Put in a 5L pot. Add the sea salt and apple cider vinegar and fill the pot with filtered water. Bring it to a boil, reduce the heat and cook meat for 3-3.5 hours. Remove the foam from time to time when it forms at the top of the liquid. If you want to add vegetables, add them into the water in the last half an hour of cooking. Add parsley at the very end, 10 minutes before you are done cooking the meat stock.
Cook chicken stock around 2 hours and fish stock 1.5 hours.
If you want extra flavour, you can also roast the meaty bones at 190C (375F) in the oven until browned before starting to make the meat stock.
After boiling, cool the meat stock down, remove the meat from the bones, including the connective tissue and marrow if you used bone marrow and strain the liquid into mason jars.
The meat you removed from the bones, you can use the same or next day in the soups, sauces, salads, pies etc.
You can store the meat stock in the fridge for 1 week to 1.5 weeks or 3 months in the freezer. Don't remove the fat that forms at the top of the liquid, it keeps the stock fresh and is very healing to the body.
Add the meat stock to any recipes that call for stock, including soups, sauces, roasts, curries, boil grains like quinoa, buckwheat, oats in them or warm it and drink as it is.
Enjoy!