What is Nowruz? Persian New Year traditions and food explained | CNN

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Just as spring is a time for rebirth, the Persian New Year is a time to celebrate new life. Nowruz is celebrated on the spring equinox, which Tuesday, March 19.

This celebration of spring is filled with symbolism around rebirth and renewal, because spring is a time when life is coming back after a long, cold winter, said Yasmin Khan, the London-based human rights campaigner turned author of “The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen,” “Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen,” and “Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from the Eastern Mediterranean.”

These three cookbooks from Khan inspire and provide a window into the cultures and stories of people from the Middle East through food.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What are some of Persian New Year’s traditions and rituals?

Yasmin Khan: On the last Tuesday before the New Year, there is a tradition to make small bonfires in your garden. Traditionally people jump over the bonfires, and it’s supposed to be a symbol of purification, challenges of the year gone by, and energetically cleansing you and preparing you for the year ahead.

A key tradition is to set up an altar in your house called a Haft-seen, which means seven S’s in Farsi. You place seven things on your altar that begin with the letter S in Farsi, which are symbols or qualities you’d like to invite in for the year ahead. You can have apples for good health, candles for light, eggs for fertility, wheatgrass for rebirth and renewal, vinegar for wisdom, and a gold coin for abundance and prosperity. Each person chooses items that have meaning for them.

The festival lasts two weeks. At the end of the festival, you take the wheatgrass you’ve been growing on your altar and you take it down to some running water somewhere. You tie knots in the wheatgrass then throw it into the running water. It would float off along with all your hopes and dreams for the year ahead.

CNN: What food is important for the holiday?

Khan: Like all cultural celebrations, food is a really integral part. Because it’s a festival celebrating spring, we eat lots of green and fresh herbs. For example, there’s this dish called Kuku Sabzi (see recipe below), which is a gorgeous herb and spinach frittata that we always eat on the first day of the year in our house. The frittata is fragrant and aromatic and is served with flatbreads, sliced tomatoes and pickles.

The first meal of the Persian New Year is always fish served with herb-flecked rice filled with dill, parsley and chives in it. The two-week festival is a time of celebration with people you know … traditionally you go to people’s houses and eat lots of delicious sweets and pastries.

CNN: What are some easy ways people can join in the celebrations?

Khan: Cooking is probably the easiest and most fun way to celebrate the new year. I really recommend that people give some Persian recipes a go. As well as being delicious, they’re healthy and vibrant with all the herbs that are packed in them.

In the weeks before the new year, we do a big deep spring cleaning called “shaking down the house” in Farsi. It’s really lovely to have a focus and have something that is about bringing in new life, renewal and rebirth during this difficult time.

And no one regrets a spring clean, so I think that’s also a really great idea. I think this is a beautiful kind of nonreligious festival that everyone can join into and that we can all relate to. It’s a time where we really try and let go of any difficulties that we’ve had in the past year and try to start the new year with a clean slate.

This Iranian frittata is a sensational deep green color and tastes like spring on a plate, bursting with fresh herby flavor. It is incredibly quick to throw together, will keep for a few days in the fridge, and can be enjoyed hot or cold.

Serve as an appetizer or as part of a mezze spread, wrapped up in a flatbread with some slices of tomato and a few salty and sour fermented cucumber pickles, or add some crumbled feta and lightly toasted walnuts for a more substantial main.

Makes 4 servings as a main or 8 servings as a starter

Prep time: 15 minutes | Total time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

7 ounces|200 grams spinach

1 3/4 ounces|50 grams fresh parsley

1 3/4 ounces|50 grams fresh dill

2 2/3 ounces|75 grams fresh cilantro

5 medium eggs

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaf

2 teaspoons sunflower oil

2 garlic cloves, crushed

Instructions

1. Wash spinach, parsley, dill and cilantro, then dry well on paper towels or in a salad spinner. Squeeze out as much moisture as possible; if the greens are wet when they are cooked, they will make the kuku go spongy. Chop finely or blitz in a food processor, in a couple of batches.

2. Heat broiler to high. Crack eggs into a large mixing bowl. Add turmeric, flour, salt, pepper and fenugreek leaf. Stir in the chopped spinach and herbs.

3. Heat oil in a large ovenproof skillet. Add garlic and gently fry over low heat to soften, about 2 minutes.

4. Make sure garlic is evenly distributed around the skillet, then pour in the egg mixture. Cook over low heat until kuku is almost cooked through, 5-8 minutes. Finish off in hot broiler.

5. Let kuku cool slightly, then cut into triangular slices to serve.

This is typically the first meal served during Nowruz, according to cookbook author Yasmin Khan.

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

Marinade

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup dark soy sauce

Juice of 1 medium lemon

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

4 salmon fillets

Mixed herb rice

1 3/4 cups white basmati rice

Sea salt

Pinch of saffron strands

Pinch of granulated sugar

2 tablespoons freshly boiled water

1 small bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 small bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped

2 tablespoons fresh dill, finely chopped

2 tablespoons bunch fresh chives, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

Sunflower oil

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided

Instructions

1. To make the marinade, combine garlic, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and cayenne pepper, if using, in a deep bowl. Add salmon, turn to coat well, cover with plastic wrap and let marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

2. Rinse and parboil rice and prepare the saffron liquid. Place saffron in a pestle and mortar with sugar and grind until you have a fine powder. Add just-boiled water and let steep for 10 minutes.

3. Very carefully, fold rice, chopped herbs, garlic clove and 1 tablespoon oil together, being careful not to break the rice grains.

4. Preheat oven to 400°F/Gas 6. Place an 8”-wide nonstick saucepan with snug-fitting lid over a medium heat. Melt 1 tablespoon butter with 2 tablespoons oil. Add 1 tablespoon saffron liquid and season with a pinch of salt. Once the fat is hot, sprinkle a thin layer of rice over the bottom and firmly press down to line the base of the pan. Using a large spoon, gently layer the rest of the rice on top, building it up into a pyramid shape. Using the handle of a wooden spoon, make 4 holes in the rice. Dot remaining 1 tablespoon butter into holes and then pour over the rest of the saffron liquid.

5. Place a clean tea towel or 4 paper towels on top of the pan and fit the lid on tightly. Tuck in the edges of the tea towel, or trim paper towels to fit, so they won’t catch the flame. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, then reduce heat to very low and cook 15 minutes more. Take rice off heat and let sit. Do not be tempted to sneak a peek while it is cooking as this will disturb the steaming process. When rice has been cooking for 10 minutes, place salmon on a baking tray and bake skin side up until cooked to your liking, 10-15 minutes.

6. Once rice has cooked, fill sink with 2” cold water and place saucepan – with lid still tightly on – in the water. This will produce a rush of steam that should loosen the base of the rice. Remove lid, place a large plate on top of pan and quickly turn rice over. Present the herbed rice with the fish and serve immediately.

This recipes are adapted from Yasmin Khan’s book “The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen.”

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Find, gather and cook wild plants with urban forager Lisa M. Rose | CNN

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Come spring, avid gardeners dig into the new growing season ready with careful cultivation plans they dreamed up over long winters. But even city-dwelling non-planners can benefit from year-round botanical bounty. They just need to learn what, where and how to harvest the wild foods growing in lawns, parks and scrubby backlots.

Chickweed, dandelion and dock provide delicious, nutrient-rich greens, while daylilies, lilacs, honeysuckle and roses can add floral overtones to syrups, jellies and baked goods. Protein-packed wild plants and plant parts include purslane, acorns and brown dock seeds. Teas and tinctures made from ground ivy, gingko and golden rod, along with many other “weeds” and invasive species, can serve various medicinal purposes, once properly prepared.

In her book “Urban Foraging: Find, Gather, and Cook 50 Wild Plants,” herbalist and expert forager Lisa M. Rose offers guidance on safely identifying, gathering and preparing edible flora that grow wild in most major US cities.

“Gathering your own food to make dinner can help instill a sense of place,” she said. She maintains that highlighting the role of wild plants in our food system can teach us to heal our soil, our waterways and our own public health. In this way, urban foraging creates new potential for greener, healthier and more sustainable ecosystems.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What makes you so passionate about urban foraging?

Lisa M. Rose: “Oh my gosh, you can EAT those?” pretty much sums up the thrill of urban foraging. Showing people all the edible plants that grow in cities helps connect them with the natural world.

It’s revolutionary to think differently of the unloved weeds and see opportunity in the neglected spaces that people pass by. The most fun, engaging thing is to get back outside and reconnect with the happiness that a dandelion flower can bring. Reinhabiting our 8-year-old, judgment-free selves allows us to recognize an elemental, earthly kind of beauty without the preconceived notions.

Plus, wild plants have a unique function in the ecosystem. Even so-called invasive species can remediate the soil and water. They help to repair areas that have been leveled and left open to erosion by creating a structure that keeps the soil from blowing away. Soil is the building block of human health, and it needs a rich, diverse base of organic material to be able to give us nutritious food.

CNN: What safety precautions do you recommend for people foraging in cities?

Rose: My family is from Flint, Michigan. I take soil and water contamination issues very seriously. The first steps to safe urban foraging are knowing where to harvest — including researching the history of the land, if possible — and learning which plants and plant parts may be more likely to contain contaminants like heavy metals or pollutants.

Nettles, for example, are apt to take up heavy metals like lead. So, I recommend harvesting these only from places free of soil contamination. The key is to take caution and be judicious. But remember, given the realities of our industrialized food system, the plants available at a commercial supermarket often have layers of pesticides. We don’t live in a perfect world.

Also, it sounds silly, but when it comes to plants or mushrooms, if you don’t know what it is, don’t pick it, and definitely don’t put it in your mouth!

CNN: What does it mean to forage responsibly? How can we take from while taking care of the land?

Rose: As you observe an environment and learn what plants could be edible, make the effort to learn further: Is this endangered? Threatened? An invasive species? We want to consider, ethically, the plant’s distribution and the habitat.

I rarely feel badly when I pick my garlic mustard. It’s going to come back. But when it comes to foraging by greengrocers and restaurants, it’s important to consider that there’s only so much the ecosystems can offer at that retail level. Where are these items coming from? How do I ensure no habitat destruction happens under the name of foraging trends? We have a long way to go in creating regionally based food systems that would help all of us, including our restaurants and grocers.

CNN: How do community health and food justice concerns fit into foraging?

Rose: It’s impossible to decouple social justice from human health. Food-system inequities have a massive impact on access to nutrients and effects on human health.

About 10% of the US population faces food insecurity — a wicked problem that foraging, gardening and local food systems cannot solve alone. But, restoring foodways — even simply refining how to cook basic things — can play a powerful part in increasing food access. Urban foraging is an effort to democratize the wild plants to make them more available to more people. You don’t have to be classically trained as a botanist at university. These are basic human skills.

CNN: How much could we rely on urban foraging to feed ourselves?

Rose: Not significantly, given the current populations and designs of our cities. It’s inconceivable and unethical for me to suggest that all of Manhattan go and use Central Park as their greengrocer. But intentionally designing more green space can create the possibility for more available food for city communities within a smaller footprint.

CNN: Can you forage year-round?

Rose: Yes! Harvesting must be done in context of your growing zone, of course, but part of the endeavor is to recognize what your landscape can provide. Even on frigid January and February days, foragers can find bark, buds and sap. Consider how, for millennia, indigenous communities supported a basic diet with fresh and stored wild foods. In many traditions, for example, acorns — high in carbohydrates and protein — played a significant role in helping to extend harvests to provide food for the winter.

Acorns are a quintessential forager’s food that can be used in soups, pulverized into a nut butter or ground into flour for baking. Every fall, I process enough acorns to make 10 to 15 pounds of flour, with the help of neighbors who drop off bags full or team up to shell them while we chat over cocktails and cheese. Later, we share the acorn bread I bake, which is kind of my signature.

Recipe: Acorn Bread

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients

  • 1 cup processed acorn flour (see how to make below)
  • 1 cup all-purpose or gluten-free flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 2 medium eggs, beaten
  • 2 1/3 cups mashed overripe bananas
  • 1-2 tablespoons cocoa powder, if desired
  • Additional butter or nonstick spray to grease pan

Instructions

Prepare the flour

  1. Shell enough fresh acorns to get about 2 cups of acorn nutmeats. Roughly 2 cups of dry acorn nutmeats will grind into 1 cup of nut flour.
  2. Add about 2 cups of acorn nutmeats to a large pot of water. Bring to a boil, let cook for 10 minutes and then strain.
  3. Allow nutmeats to cool. Then, using a dehydrator or oven, slowly dry the nutmeats over low heat.
  4. Once completely dry, grind the nutmeats with a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle to reach the texture of a flour.
  5. Store acorn flour in the freezer for up to 6 months.

Bake the bread

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
  2. Using butter, coconut oil or a non-stick spray, lightly grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan.
  3. In a large bowl, combine the flours, baking soda and salt.
  4. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture.
  5. Pour batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Remove from oven and let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack.
  6. Serve warm.

CNN: How does the climate crisis factor into urban foraging?

Rose: We’ve arrived at a big crossroads. At no other time has our human population had to face and address a rapidly changing climate across the globe. This affects our water systems, our food systems, even determining where we can live — as evidenced by migrations of people moving away from the shores of lakes and oceans.

Urban foraging for wild plants helps us rethink how we live alongside the natural world, looking at habitat loss. We can learn a lot simply by honing our ability to observe the little dandelion or the patch of cattails along the riverside. How might we add back our green spaces that can build soil, support the biodiversity that we need and bring forward our pollinators?

You can’t be what you don’t see. If you don’t have a connection to the water, a farmers market, a vegetable garden or to considering what that dandelion might be doing in the soil, how could you ever become a climate-conscious Earth protector, a steward of the ecosystem?

Foraging helps us pay closer attention, which helps us to reestablish a more caring and less extractive relationship with the natural world.

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High-quality bone broth comes ready-made. Here’s why you should make it yourself | CNN

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After everyone at your table has devoured the juiciest pieces of a roast chicken and you’ve treated your canine to the edible rejects, hold off on sliding that picked-over carcass into the trash. Your bird has another gift for you: broth.

Making homemade broth requires only a few minutes of your time, and the benefits extend far beyond sensory pleasure: to your health, wealth, and even the world around you.

For centuries, humans have been simmering otherwise inedible animal parts in water, sometimes for days, extracting maximum flavor and nutrients from those bones for nourishing meals to come. Thrifty grandmas and chefs the world over have refined that technique, adding vegetables and seasonings reflecting their cultures and customs. Traditional recipes earned reputations for purported healing powers.

Over the last few decades, followers of the Paleo diet have incorporated 24-hour broth-making into their everyday kitchen routines, often sipping on their extra-strength broth as a gluten-free pick-me-up in place of coffee and tea — both of which are off-limits on their regimen.

New York City chef and Food Network personality Marco Canora turned to bone broth — which was regularly available to him at his popular restaurant, Hearth — to help him combat the effects of years of poor lifestyle habits. In 2014, he opened a takeout window called Brodo (Italian for broth) to sell to-go cups of his chef-crafted potions as beverages. He went on to write a book about it and sell it prepackaged and frozen nationwide.

Breathless testimonies from celebrity influencers of bone broth’s purported magical powers — from easing joint pain to reducing wrinkles to improving gut health — flooded the internet. Products labeled “bone broth” popped up on supermarket shelves. The trend shows no sign of abating. When last checked, TikTok videos with the hashtag #bonebroth had received more than 158 million views.

Some dietitians and medical professionals agree that bone broth can be a worthy addition to a balanced diet — supplying collagen and other important nutrients. But given that every bone broth recipe and human body are different, specific health claims linked to bone broth should be taken with a grain of salt.

I had been skeptical of the hype all along, and uninterested in exploring it for myself, until I made a batch last fall by accident while cleaning up after Thanksgiving dinner. Unable to find room in the fridge for the half-eaten turkey, I sawed off the remaining sandwich-worthy slices and dumped the picked-off carcass and grisly parts into my slow cooker, along with half an onion and a few odds and ends from the crisper.

I set the cooker to low and left it alone for a full 24 hours, giving me time to recuperate from the previous festivities while basking in the tantalizing fragrances wafting from the kitchen.

The first taste of the finished broth blew me away — richer and more complex than any packaged product or broth I’d made from scratch on top of my stove in a fraction of the time. I could practically feel the nourishment coursing through my bones. I placed the strained broth in the fridge and was happy to find it congealed to a jiggly consistency the next day, a clear sign that those picked-off turkey parts had done their job. And now I had the foundation for restaurant-quality gumbo made almost entirely with remains of the feast: a win-win all the way around.

My curiosity was piqued. So what if bone broth wasn’t the cure-all it was cracked up to be. It was wholesome, grocery-stretching and most importantly to me, freaking delicious. I wanted to figure out how to reap the full spectrum of advantages bone broth had to offer. I turned to experts for guidance.

Linton Hopkins, a James Beard Award-winning chef who helms the newly reopened Holeman & Finch Public House in Atlanta along with other high-profile spots in the South, learned the craft the classic way at the Culinary Institute of America.

“As a chef and a cook, I don’t feel good without a stock going. It’s one of my things,” Hopkins said. “We make all our stocks at our restaurants. And I do it all the time at home for me and my wife, Gina. They’re the easiest thing in the world. I’ll roast a whole chicken, we’ll eat what we can, and the rest will go right into the Instant Pot. I did the same thing with the bones from a beef roast last night. I’m no doctor, but I know good food is good for your life.”

Besides taste and nutrition, broth-making  can be a sound economic decision for the budget-conscious.

The terms “stock” and “broth” are often used interchangeably, Hopkins noted. But stocks typically indicate a higher bone-to-meat ratio. Broths can even be made with just the meat. “But as a whole-animal, whole-vegetable cook, all my stocks and broths are essentially bone broth. I see stock as an ingredient I cook with. Broth to me is a finished word — meaning it’s ready to serve in a bowl as is.”

Aside from taste and nutrition, he views stock- and broth-making as both an economic decision and an ethical responsibility.

“In the restaurant business, the margins are very thin, so we have to strive for zero waste,” he said. “We ask a lot of an animal to give its life for our diets. If we’re going to bring these items into our kitchens and throw them away after a single use, then we’re part of the problem.”

Michelle Tam grew up in a traditional Cantonese American household in California’s Bay Area where her mother served multicourse meals that always ended with soup.

“And she would always throw a bone in there. I remember as a kid we would walk down to the neighborhood butcher, and he would step out of the freezer with this giant plastic bag of bones for 25 cents,” Tam said. “We would get a variety of different kinds of bones with some meat left on them that would flavor the soup, and it was really delicious.”

But it wasn’t until she and her husband began eliminating processed foods from their diets and replacing them with wholesome ones as part of a fitness regimen that she considered making broth from scratch herself. “I don’t know that it’s some magical elixir,” said Tam, a former clinical pharmacist who now creates recipes full time for her popular Nom Nom Paleo blog and spin-off cookbooks. “But it’s a great source of collagen, which most people don’t get enough of and is really important for joints and gut health and all that stuff.”

Chicken feet can be among the tasty bone broth ingredients, providing a great source of collagen.

Collagen is the main constituent of connective tissue fibrils and bones that releases gelatin into liquid as it cooks. It’s most abundant in skin, feet, joints, marrow and knuckles. Tam may mix parts from different animals — lamb, pork, beef, chicken. The results, she said, are inevitably tasty.

“I’m always collecting chicken thigh bones, and I buy chicken feet when I see them at the butcher,” she said. Chicken feet contain tons of collagen, she said. But she warned not to go overboard, or you may wind up with a rubber ball. “I tried that, and it wasn’t delicious. One or two should do the trick. I also like to include something meaty for flavor, like a chicken leg. And chicken wings are excellent.”

Because bone broth can be “a spectacular growth medium for bacteria,” Tam refrigerates hers as soon as it reaches room temperature, and whatever isn’t consumed within a few days goes into the freezer. She offers ways to store bone broth conveniently and safely in usable portion sizes (she’s tried muffin tins, ice cube trays and silicone baking molds) and recipes for her favorite ways of using broth in a super-simple egg drop soup and slow cooker Korean short ribs on her blog.

With her multi-cooker, Tam can now produce collagen-rich bone broth in as little as an hour. But she’s not above buying bone broth ready-made when time is short or personal bone supplies are low, now that she’s found several brands she can trust. Roli Roti, which began as a food truck in the Bay Area selling rotisserie chicken, contains only a couple of ingredients and is “super high quality and super gelatinous.” Bonafide Provisions, found in many supermarket freezer sections, has become another standby.

Cassy Joy Garcia, a certified holistic nutritionist and New York Times best-selling cookbook author, became a fan of bone broth more than a decade ago during her marathon-running days and writes about it regularly on her healthy lifestyle blog, Fed + Fit.

“I think bone broth is getting some new attention now with grocery prices on the rise and people wanting to do more with less,” Garcia said. “I feel like it’s an easy entry point for some good DIY kitchen basics. If you’ve already roasted a chicken, just go ahead and throw that carcass in your pot or pressure cooker along with that random onion in the pantry and scraggly carrot in the fridge, and lo and behold, you’re going to save yourself some money and have broth that tastes better and is better for you than anything you’d buy.”

Toss in vegetable scraps from your fridge such as carrots and celery when preparing a bone broth.

She collects leftover bones from roasted meats and chicken in silicone freezer bags and keeps a veggie bowl at the forefront of her fridge for tossing in vegetable scraps, peels and all that could go into a homemade broth.

Now with more mouths to feed as a mother of three preschoolers, she does allow herself to take a shortcut from time to time with a quality premade product. One of her favorites is Fond sipping broth made of grass-fed beef and pasture-raised chicken bones, which come in flavor combinations such as ginger and cayenne, and shiitake and sage.

“They’re definitely a luxury product,” she said. “But they’re really a cool way to show what a broth can be and can open our eyes to exploring different flavors we can play with at home.”

On her blog, Garcia offers a detailed guide to making beef and chicken bone broth, and a slightly more complex one boosted with turmeric and ginger, which she uses for making her favorite chicken soup.

She gives you the options for making the broth in various vessels but makes no bones about her preference for her high-speed pressure cooker.

As for myself, I’m sticking to my slow cooker for now, content to inhale those 24-hour aromatics all day and allow them to soothe me to sleep.

Since Thanksgiving, I’ve made several more batches of bone broth following advice from the experts and falling down many rabbit holes of online research along the way.

I’ve been patronizing the nearby international farmers market more often to seek out a variety of bones from animals that have been responsibly raised without harmful chemicals that could negate my broth’s potential health benefits.

Freeze whatever hasn't been consumed of your bone broth within a few days of making it.

Some purists only use bones and water, giving them more flexibility to add layers of flavor later. But I can’t resist throwing in a few extras to amp up the nutritional and flavor profile (roasted mushrooms and a splash of red wine for beef, fresh ginger and turmeric for chicken, and always extra cloves of garlic).

I’ve made a habit of stashing yogurt containers of my finished products, along with baggies of leftover bones and trimmings, so long as space permits in my freezer.

Serious chefs boil the bones first to rid them of some of the impurities and then caramelize them in a 400- to 450-degree oven to deepen their flavors before proceeding. One day maybe I’ll find the motivation to give that a try.

I have quickly learned that, as easy and satisfying as bone broth is to make, I’m lucky if I can produce 2 quarts at a time — barely enough for one batch of soup or gumbo. But I wasn’t planning to replace my morning coffee with steaming broth anyway. And if I’m really hankering for the real deal before I get around to making another batch, I’m happy to have discovered I can buy Roli Roti, the brand Tam recommended, in the meat department of my neighborhood Publix.

You don’t have to follow any recipe to make bone broth. But it does help to have some guidance until you get the hang of it. Here’s the basic formula I’ve been loosely going by based on several recipes I’ve studied. Feel free to deviate with what the local butcher needs to dispense of, or what’s soon to go south in your fridge. Mother Earth will be grateful.

Susan Puckett’s recipe for bone broth is highly flexible. If you have no leftover bones, chicken or turkey wings, drumsticks, necks and gizzards also work great. For extra collagen, a few chicken feet will do the trick. For beef broth, follow the same procedure as for chicken. Or feel free to use bones from other animals as well — lamb, pork, game. Larger bones will take longer to break down so you may want to allow more simmering time.

Makes roughly 2 quarts (or more, if you have a larger vessel)

2-3 pounds roasted or raw chicken or beef bones, or a combination

2 carrots, cut up

2 celery stalks, cut up

1 medium unpeeled onion, halved

5 unpeeled garlic cloves, smashed

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon peppercorns

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

Water

1. Place the bones, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaves, salt, peppercorns and vinegar in a slow cooker (mine holds 6 quarts) and add enough water so bones are submerged but not floating.

2. Cover with the lid and let simmer on low setting for 12 to 24 hours.

3. Skim off any scum that’s collected on the surface. Turn off the heat and let it cool slightly. Discard the solids (picking out edible meat bits for yourself or the dog.)

4. Set a large fine-mesh sieve over a large bowl, strain and let it cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate. Scrape off the fat that congeals on the surface.

5. Use within four to five days or transfer to jars or plastic containers, label and freeze for up to five months. (Or pour the broth into ice cube trays, muffin tins or silicone molds, and freeze and pop them out into freezer bags.)

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