Best Beef Bone Broth

This beef bone broth is a satisfying and nutritional broth easy to make and great for using in soups, sauces or for drinking as is.

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Beef bone broth is a traditional healthy food (or drink?) that has become popular again in recent years. It is considered to have lots of health benefits and is beneficial for your bones, digestion and joints. This page from Medical News Today gives a good overview of the benefits.

In my family, my mom always made beef broth and then cooked soups with it later when we were growing up. I only started cooking this a few years back. My first attempts weren’t that great, but now I feel like I’m a pro. Just kidding. I can probably still learn something, but here is my perfected recipe to help you make a good pot of bone broth.

Ingredients for Beef Bone Broth

• Water – to cook the broth in
• Beef meat – gives additional flavor to the broth and can be later used in soups.
• Beef soup bones – absolutely necessary for a good broth, in my opinion.
• Beef marrow bones – Bones with marrow give extra flavor to the broth, plus extra vitamins and minerals.
• Onion – yellow or white. Peel off the dry outer leaves.
• Carrot – peel using a vegetable peeler
• Celery or celery root
• Apple Cider Vinegar – some acid to get the minerals and vitamins out of the bones.
• Seasonings – Bay leaf, Black pepper corns and Salt

How to Make Beef Broth

Add the beef bones and meat to a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Drain the water and fill up again with clean water and bring to a gentle boil again. Proceed to cook with this fresh water. This step of changing out the water is optional, but it does help get rid of more impurities that would then normally remain in the broth.

Once the broth starts cooking it will let out a grayish/white-ish foam on the top called scum. Use a fine mesh sieve or a ladle to remove the scrum for a few minutes (More scum will keep forming until the water really starts to boil).

Once most of the scum is removed, add the rest of the ingredients to the water and bones, reduce heat to a good simmer and cook for 3 hours.

I find that beef meat really needs the 3 hours to become soft and tender.

Once done, remove from heat discard the bones. The marrow from the bones can be enjoyed (tastes great on a piece of toast with some salt and parsley). Filter the broth using a fine mesh sieve or a line it with a cheese cloth, for an even purer broth.

Serve. Or proceed to use as needed in soups or sauces.

How to Use/Serve Beef Bone Broth

Use the beef bone broth for making soups like this Russian Sorrel Soup, Chicken and Wild Rice Soup, or Russian Borscht (recipe coming soon).

Use the beef broth in sauce recipes, like in this ground beef sauce recipe.

You can also drink broth as is. It has a lot of of flavors in it and the nutritional value is great. Sprinkle with a bit of green onion or parsley for garnish and enjoy.

I have also heard of people making bone broth hot chocolate or hot cocoa (In trying to increase their vitamin and mineral intake, I guess). However, for this purpose, you will need to cook just the meat and the bones, without the vegetables and seasonings.

How to Store and Reheat the Broth

Cool the broth and store in the fridge. Use up within 3-4 days.

If you want to keep the broth longer, the best way is to freeze it. Fill it into jars leaving some headspace. Cool in the fridge overnight, and then place into the future. I just use normal glass jars from pickles. If you’re looking for something more upscale than that, these TrueSeal Glass Food Storage Containers look awesome.

If you are using glass jars, it is important that you leave enough room at the top. The broth will expand once it freezes, so if there is no room, the jar can break.

Tips and Tricks for Making Beef Bone Broth

Give the broth time to cook and don’t try to hurry the process by increasing the heat. Beef meat generally needs 3 hours to really cook through. Also, the longer you cook the bones, the more nutritional value you will get out of them. So cooking longer is also an option (just maybe remove the meat after 3 hours).

Recipe Variations

The only things that are a must for this recipe are water, beef bones, and beef meet. Arguably, you can leave off the meat, as well. So everything else can be changed up. You can add additional vegetables into the broth, like red pepper, or additional herbs, like a bunch of rosemary or parsley.

Recommended Tools

• A big enough stock pot – you obviously need a pot for cooking stock:) Use a bigger one if making a bigger portion.
• Vegetable peeler – is helpful for peeling carrots and celery root if using.
• Fine mesh sieve – I have a set of 3 and love using the smaller ones to skim the scum and to pour the broth through to filter out all the little pieces that might end up in the soup (peppercorns, small pieces of meat, onion, etc.
• Glass jars for freezing or storing broth – I just use jars I have from canned pickles.

More Easy Recipes for Broth

My other broth recipe that I totally recommend and that I make all the time, is this Homemade Chicken Broth recipe. I’ve been making it for years and I always make sure to have some on hand or a frozen soup chicken to be able to make one once I run out of broth.

Lastly, if you make this Beef Bone Broth recipe, make sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating here! I’d love to hear back from you and will do my best to answer and respond to every comment. And of course, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram if you make this recipe. I’d love to see the photos of the recipes you have made!