Is Beef Broth on a Clear Liquid Diet?
One of the bad things about getting older is the need for unpleasant medical tests. More dreaded than the actual test may be the day before, when one is restricted to a diet of clear liquids. I should have done more research. I just went to the grocery store with the list of acceptable foods sent by the doctor's office.
Bone broth. That's a thing now, right? Paleo people love it. I bought a quart of organic chicken bone broth (more than $6), plus juices, tea, Jell-O and more. I contemplated the popsicles but didn't buy any.
The morning of the liquid diet I popped open the bone broth and heated it for breakfast. As my younger colleagues would say, it was nasty.
Hurumph, as we old people say. We know how to make broth. It's "free food," made from what a lot of cooks throw away. Years ago, a cooking teacher who trained in France, and who had Jacques Pepin teach annually at her school, told me even she couldn't believe the scraps he would save for stock.
We happened to have most of a chicken I'd roasted over the weekend (using Ina Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken recipe, which is indeed.)
How can bone broth be hard? This is just a new way with an old, old thing, right? I did all the usual: Stripped the meat into one container, throwing away all the skin and fat. I put all the bones into a big pot with a scrubbed carrot, an onion cut in half with the peel still on to make it a pretty golden color, some parsley with stems, some limp celery (with leaves!), at least a teaspoon of black peppercorns, several bay leaves and pieces of random tomato and onion I found in the fridge.
And I halfheartedly slammed at some of the chicken bones with a mallet, to break them open and let the good marrow out.
After it was covered with water and set to come to a boil, I made Jell-O with some of the fruit juices and limeade. Then I turned down the heat under the pot to a bare simmer and went off to do other things, including reading about bone broth.
How many food fads have I seen come and go? Honey, I remember oat bran.
Bad news: I should have started yesterday. (Can you tell by now that I do things backwards?)
According to Wellness Mama, chicken bone broth should be simmered 24 hours, beef broths for 48, to completely remove all the nutrients from the bones and get the good stuff in your cup.
More bad news: My broth was missing vinegar. Bone broth starts with bones and apple cider vinegar, which helps leach the good stuff out of the bones.
Good news came from the New York Times: Julia Moskin's beef bone broth recipe says to cook it only "at least 5 hours and 45 minutes."
Moskin wrote about this latest superfood last month, and had a great quote from chef Mareo Canora.
"When you talk to chefs about this, everyone's head is exploding," he told her. He has opened a storefront window beside his East Village restaurant, Hearth, and dubbed it Brodo. Paper cups of three different broths are dispensed through the window.
It was time for lunch. My broth had only simmered a couple of hours, but it already smelled so much better than the canned stuff. I ladled some through a strainer into the fat separator, poured it into an insulated cup and added salt.
It was good. The Jell-O was not bad, but it was still Jell-O. I had a carbonated soft drink, iced tea and limeade. Then I sipped some more broth. I wished I had bought the popsicles.
A clear liquid diet, I realized, needs all the variation in texture, flavor and temperature one can manage. Bad news: It was too late to make aspic, a good idea from this post.
Good news: Since this is New Orleans, the list of acceptable clear liquid foods includes snowballs. (Bad news: It's February.)
On another local note: I remembered this recipe from Bethany Bultman for Oyster File Broth. Although the soup is not a clear liquid, I think oyster liquor, the liquid that comes with oysters could be strained and heated. It would do any New Orleanian body good. (Note to self: Remember this.)
For dinner tonight, I expect my chicken bone broth to be even better. Then, I'm going to transfer what's left into the slow cooker for overnight simmering, to see what it turns into tomorrow.
I'll let you know. In the meantime: Have you had to be on a clear liquid diet? What did or didn't work?
More about broth!
BAD IDEAS for broth:
Don't add salt. As stock reduces, the flavors concentrate, and it could end up overly salty.
Don't use cabbage, cauliflower or any brassica vegetables. They add offodors (or, as my young collagues would say: They make it stinky.)
Do not stir. Stirring makes broth cloudy.
GOOD IDEAS for broth:
Save bones and vegetable trimmings in a bag in the freezer until you have enough for broth.
The collagen in bones, especially in joints, knuckles, tips of chicken wings, etc., will cause long-simmered bone broths to gel when refrigerated. Some recipes include a couple of chicken feet for added collagen.
Fat skimmed off refrigerated broth can be saved and used to saute vegetables and other items. It can also be frozen.
BROTH SAFETY:
Broth must be cooled quickly and refrigerated promptly. Set the pot in an ice bath in the sink to cool if needed.
ON THE FENCE ABOUT BROTH?
Read the many comments on the Wellness Mama post linked above, and you'll see there is significant disagreement in the broth-making community. One thing for sure: They use bones from animals raised naturally and organically, and have found many ways to find them inexpensively (or not).
Broth-ers seem to be on the fence about roasting bones before simmering them, as chefs do to enhance flavor and color.
Broth-ers are divided about use of a pressure cooker to make broth. In my experience, it makes the best and most gelatinous broth ever, but in small amounts. Broth proponents tend to make big batches, and freeze amounts to drink three times a day.
For those who do not want to leave broth simmering overnight on an unattended stove, a slow cooker is recommended.
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Food editor Judy Walker can be reached at jwalker@nola.com .Follow her on Twitter ( @JudyWalkerCooks ) and Facebook ( JudyWalkerCooks ).
Source: https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_6d9e215a-a9e1-5dab-b37c-375938c99493.html
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