I often make my own chicken bone broth from scratch, but I go through a lot of broth when I make stuff, so I freeze and save the ‘good stuff’ for meals where it will best be used, and supplement with commercial stocks and broths when making say, a simple weekday soup or something.
Lately I’ve been buying a brand of bone broth called ’ Pacific Foods Organic Unsalted Chicken Bone Broth’. I like the taste of it, but it’s pricey, and I’ve noticed when I refrigerate unused portions it’s still completely liquid the next day. Unlike my homemade bone broth, which is like jello from the rendered collagen after being refrigerated.
So is Pacific Foods calling it ‘bone broth’ just marketing BS? Is it borderline bone broth, but just barely, with only a bit of collagen? Is there any brand out there that is actual bone broth?
That’s a good point. I’m also a fan of store brought bone broth. I think it tastes better than the equivalent. But does it actually? It shows no sign of being made from collagen, as you point out.
Is there so minimum amount the broth can be shown the bone to be able to sell as bone broth?
The posh supermarkets (Whole foods, Birite in San Francisco, etc) do sell what I think is actual bone broth, that they keep refrigerated and sell for outrageous prices
It’s one of those weird ways the economy has fundamentally changed. For most of human history bone would be the cheapest thing you could buy from a butcher, now is more expensive by weight than a lot of meats.
As far as I know, there’s no FDA confirmed definition of “bone broth”. Thus, like a lot of descriptive terms, it’s marketing speech, and not regulated.
So, while I have seen some options that do tend to set up (often the more expensive ones), they are very much in the minority. If I see such descriptors, I just assume it’s a heartier stock, and not worth my time.
These days, if I’m running low on the good stuff, I make it a point to buy a bunch of chicken leg quarters or drumsticks (even at current prices, often available at $1 US a pound or less) and make stock right away. With my pressure or slow cooker, I’ll have quarts of stock the next day (at the latest) for less than the price of one carton of the store-bought stuff.
Costco’s Kirkland chicken bone broth used to be pretty good, with a nice taste and silky mouth feel. But that changed about 6 months ago. It seems they’ve removed the actual bone broth from the recipe. Now it’s just chicken and vegetable stock, according to the label. Ugh.
Yeah, that’s what I had been kind of assuming, too.
That’s disappointing to hear. I’ve usually been really impressed with all of the Kirkland brand products I’ve tried. I hope that’s not a habinger of corner-cutting measures on the part of Costco with other Kirkland brand products. Or, maybe the manufacturer they contract with to put a Kirkland brand label on their bone broth changed their recipe and it wasn’t Costco themselves making a choice to go with a cheaper formulation.
Yes, cultural attitudes toward certain food items change and make them much more expensive than they used to be. So it was with certain cuts of meat, like flank, hanger and skirt steak-- used to be dirt-cheap, then became pricey as fajitas became popular and higher-end chefs started making recipes using those cuts. Or chicken wings-- nobody wanted those until Buffalo wings became popular. Now a bag of frozen raw chicken wings is surprisingly pricey. So it is with ‘bone broth’-- it’s now a big deal, and supposedly confers great health benefits. But I was making bone broth before it was cool
The real pro trick is to get rotisserie chickens, eat what you’re going to eat, and toss the rest into the pot for stock. It’s roasted chicken bone broth, and you already got to eat the meat.
Or for that matter, you can buy whole chickens and go to town in the same fashion- roast them, disassemble them, and use them for other uses, and save the wings, backbone, etc… for stock.
If you really want to get frugal, you can save your trimmings from onions, celery, and carrots, and use those in your by-product stock. You won’t know the difference (and the commercial outfits do this anyway), and it’s more ingredient-efficient.
Good bone broth IMO requires a fairly long simmering time. Just get a big pot and simmer it all day/night. Crock-pots are fantastic for this FYI. If you’ve done it right, when you put it in the refrigerator, it’ll set up like chicken-flavored jello.
Yep, this is what I do-- use the leftovers from two Costco rotisserie chickens for stock. I freeze a carcass and save until I have a second one to make stock from.
Also, I started a thread on homemade chicken stock a few years back in which @Puzzlegal said she liked using a mix of roasted and raw chicken for the most well-rounded stock:
So ever since then, I keep a bag of raw frozen chicken wings on hand and throw a few thawed ones into the pot along with the rotisserie leftovers and it does indeed make for a fantastic stock / bone broth.
Heh, glad to be helpful. I still believe that makes the best broth, but I’m too lazy to do that most of the time. I enjoy roast chicken, and the enormous majority of the chicken broth i make is from the (raw) neck, crop, and heart plus the (cooked) carcass, scraps, and perhaps the leg that no one wanted to eat, with an onion and any vegetable scraps i have in the freezer. (Carrot peels, the base of the celery, any celery that’s getting old and limp, onion skins… Into the freezer they go.)
Two chicken carcasses is what fits in my instant pot, and 90 minutes on high pressure makes a terrific broth.
We have done the conversation about “stock” vs. “broth” a few times. IIRC the consensus was:
At one time the terms had definitely distinct meanings but at least in casual speech most folks now use them interchangeably. Real pro chefs probably preserve the distinction, but TV chefs don’t.
The funny thing to me is that under the strict traditional definitions, “stock” is made from bones and has collagen whereas “broth” never has bones nor collagen. So the term “bone broth” is an inherently self-contradictory misnomer. But a very popular one.
Here’s one very old thread directly on point:
There have been passing mentions of the stock / broth controversy in many other cooking threads. But they’re hard to search for.
I get the same feeling from “bone” anything. Bones are just not something used by my parents or grandparents, and they’re not something that cross my mind as something edible. Very interesting to read how it is a staple for some folks.
Take something like a cow femur, saw it in half lengthwise, season, and roast. You get a decorative bony trough full of meaty gooey goodness sort of reminiscent at least shape-wise of an overgrown thick-walled celery spear filled with PB or some other thick dip.
This is very true, especially if you’re buying price-controlled rotisserie chicken such as from Costco. I don’t normally do this, because I’m not a fan of rotisserie chicken (especially as I’m the only meat eater in the house) but it’s a great hack.
Not something commonly done nowadays, but people would serve cracked beef bones and you’d eat the marrow from them. There were even specific spoons for the purpose. What is a Marrow Spoon?
Um, ewwww… but if it was something I’d been raised eating, I’m sure I’d feel differently.
Back to the OP: it’s a load of hooey, really. Only the homemade broth really has noticeable collagen (btw, there’s a brand, “College Inn” - my husband pointed out that it was a homonym for collagen). Chicken / turkey stock will turn into poultry jello. Homemade beef stock won’t, but will feel somewhat silky - not syrupy, but definitely more dense than pure water.
I get the sense that “bone broth” is just that: boiled bones, with no other stuff added, though some people swear by adding vinegar to the water to “extract more calcium” or something. Everything I’ve been able to find suggests that the effect is negligible.
I get the sense that “bone broth” is the same thing as the broth and/or stock that they were previously selling but renamed to attract those who heard that it’s a good thing to have. (A couple of years ago, “bone broth” became very trendy.)
It’s mostly bullshit and marketing. Broth and stock are made from the same ingredients. Stock is usually cooked down more so it’s more concentrated. Cook it down even farther and it’s called demi-glace. Further than that it’s glace de viande, which is gelatinous. But it’s all made with bones. If the bones are roasted, it’s called brown broth; if not it’s white broth and neither depend on their names from the animal it comes from. Chicken stock is a bit more difficult to get a robust flavor, as the bones are hollow, so there is no marrow to add to the flavor.
