Vinegar Free Chicken Bone Broth Recipe w/ Justine Stenger

Recipe by Justine Stenger

Justine is an Autism Diet Specialist who is an expert in preparing therapeutic- grain free, gluten and casein free meals to aid in the healing of children with Autism and many other chronic illnesses

Justine is passionate about nutrient density and will help you gain an understanding of
the healing power of food, how to successfully adopt a therapeutic diet and help you to experience the impact food has on healing. She will provide you with the tools and coaching you need to quickly and effectively get started on a bio-individual healing diet.

Connect with Justine

www.jingerhealingfoods.com

Read the Video Transcript

Justine:

[00:00:30]
Today we're going to make a chicken broth. We have the chicken necks and backs. I'm going to throw in a couple of chicken feet. We have onion skins. I also don't ever measure anything. I think that that's part of the joy of cooking is, really getting a feel for your own flavor profile and making things according to your own taste. We have a bunch of parsley. Onion skins, parsley. I'll throw in a couple of stalks of celery. This has already been washed. We're going to throw in … These are frozen bones.

Mike:
Can you review the ratios again, on the bones?

Justine:
I use about a pound of bones for every liter of water. This is just over 2 pounds of bones. Then I'm just adding the feet. The feet are not included in that ratio. I always use a Mason jar, just to measure my water because I store the broth in Mason jars. We're going to add 1 liter of water.

[00:01:00]
Once you bring that broth up to a simmer, you want to make sure that just hovering it at 100 degrees. You don't want a rapid boiling point because then you have the issue with glutamate. You want the simmer to be just hovering around 100. When you open the lid, it should literally be like you're looking at the broth and you should occasionally see little bubbles.

[00:01:30]
We're also going to add some rosemary. Again the herbs are … Just add whatever you want. Then we're going to add about a tablespoon of salt. Again, you can just play with that. I tend to have a salty palette, so I probably add more than a lot of people do. We have our broth all ready to go. There's a couple of bay leaves that we threw in there too. I put it on, bring it up to a simmer, and just let it go for about 12 hours.

[00:02:00]
Again, you can play with the timing. This broth was about 12 hours and you'll get that type of gelatin content. Basically, you know when the bones are done, if you can just press the bones together and they smush in your fingers. That's a good way to tell if they're, all those nutrients are out.

Mike:

[00:02:30]
Hey folks, it's Mike here with highintensityhealth.com. Thanks for tuning back in. We are in the kitchen of Justine Stenger. She's a healing chef. She works with a lot of clients with autoimmune disease and autism actually, and goes into family's home. I think this is really unique, Justine. You go into family's homes and help them cook them and prepare meals for them, for folks that are really sensitive.

Bone broth is one of these healing foods that everyone recommends, but there's a lot of controversy about the histamines, the glutamates. Should you use vinegar? Should you not? All that. You have a really awesome recipe. First of all, I want to thank you for having us in your home and in your kitchen. Let's talk about bone broth.

Justine:

[00:03:00]
Yeah. I make bone broth every single day. It's going in my kitchen 24/7, non-stop just because I do make it a priority to make it for each one of my clients before the other cook day. I use it as a base for all our soups and all our stews and sauces. Then some people request that I make additional bone broth just for them to sip on, like tea during the week, which I'm happy to do.

[00:03:30]
Today we're going to make a chicken broth. We have the chicken necks and backs. I'm going to throw in a couple of chicken feet. We have onion skins. The one thing that I do when I'm making the broth is, I never use the whole vegetable. A, because the cost of food is so high and I just don't like to waste anything. Whenever I do so much cooking, I always have ends of carrots and celery. We have some garlic scape ends in there. The onion skins are actually the most flavorful. When you're making a broth, never throw your onion skins. Just give them a good wash and throw them into your broth.

[00:04:00]
I also don't ever measure anything. I encourage you all at home to just taste and adjust it. I think that that's part of the joy of cooking is, really getting a feel for your own flavor profile and making things according to your own taste. We're going to throw that all in there. We have bunch of parsley. Onion skins, parsley. I'll throw in a couple of stalks of celery. This has already been washed.

Mike:
Notice, we're not using any knives, which I think is really unique because you're lowering that barrier to entry because people say “Oh, cooking is so time-intensive. I have to plan. I have to do this.” What I see you doing Justine is, you're just throwing stuff in there which is really cool. Because we're cooking it for a long period of time, it's going to break itself down. Is that the idea?

[00:04:30]
Justine:

Right, right. Yeah, it's a little barbaric, but it's easier. That is one of the barriers that a lot of people say to me, when they're making broth. They say it's super time-consuming, and it's not. It's a myth. It's something that you have to add into your routine. Once you get the hang of it, it takes 2 minutes to throw a pot of broth together. Then you just turn on the stove and let it go.

[00:05:00]
I probably shouldn't admit this to everybody, but I let my broth go while I'm sleeping, all night. It's an electric stove. I'm super comfortable with it. It's not a problem at all. The one thing that I do want to talk about, is the ratio of bones to water. You want to do, for really nice, gelatinous broth, and we have a bit of a finished product here, that just shows the gelatinous …

Mike:
Pretty gelatinous. Yeah, I can tell. Yeah.

Justine:
… It's not thick like some broths are, but this is my preferred gelatin content.

Mike:
[00:05:30]
Justine, this is a really good point about the gelatinous aspect of it, and that's where a lot of folks talk about the healing properties, the Glycosaminoglycans of the bone broth. That's how it helps heal the gut and so forth. Also we know that the high levels of glutamic acid, using vinegar.

Some people, there's 2 different schools of thought with bone broth. Your style which is, throw it in there and just get it done, which I think is really awesome. Again, it lowers that barrier to entry, so there's no excuses about it. Other people are like “No, you have to soak the bones in vinegar for 15 minutes.” This is in Sally Fallon's book, Nourishing Traditions. Soak it for 15 minutes and chop up the vegetables, and add the parsley after-the-fact.

[00:06:00]
Talk to us, because you're working with families that have really sensitive folks, like autoimmune disease and autism. They're getting all the benefits and healing themselves. Give us the rationale, the back story about why no vinegar in there?

Justine:

[00:06:30]
Again, this is really controversial and I've learned from Dr. Katherine Reid, who has her PhD in … I don't even know what her PhD is in, but I know that she studied glutamic acid in foods. She thinks that free glutamate is eliminating free glutamate from the diet is one of the reasons why children do so well on dairy-free and gluten-free diet, just because those 2 foods are high in glutamic acid. Then the processing of them further increases the free glutamate.

[00:07:00]
What happens with the broth is, when we add vinegar, we're lowering the pH of the broth. Then the bones are cooked for a long simmer time. Some people are cooking that broth at a temperature that is too high. The combination of that low pH of the broth and the long simmer time turns that glutamate into free glutamate. The protein becomes unbound. This can cause a lot of problems with children with autism or anybody that has issues with higher levels of glutamic acid.

Mike:

[00:07:30]
What we're seeing here is a really gelatinous, free of vinegar, free of that whole process. In the mindset … In your mind you're like, “Well, how is the Glycosaminoglycans and compounds from the bone broth or from the bones, sorry, going to get out, into the bone broth without vinegar?” Here clearly, it's there. It's very gelatinousy.

I think a lot of people just, we all have biases. I think that's a bias that, because it's something we've been taught for a long time. I like that you're breaking the rules a little bit and coming up with your own recipes here, and really helping people heal. That's really cool. I want to commend you.

Justine:

[00:08:00]
Also with the vinegar, I'll just add that it really just speeds up the process. You can still draw all those nutrients from the bones into the broth. Your simmer time is just going to be longer than you would, if you add the vinegar. Again, the amount of vinegar that is added, contributes to the level of free glutamate. There's a number of different variables that you do need to consider, but I don't do any vinegar at all, thanks to Dr. Katherine Reid.

Mike:
Yeah, I'll have to check out her information. You do have chicken bones. Now, if you were to have beef bones, would you do a little bit of vinegar or no?

Justine:

[00:08:30]
No, I wouldn't. I would just increase the simmer time. Again, that simmer time, if somebody is really sensitive to glutamate, you also need to be careful about the length of time that you're cooking your broth because the longer that you cook it, the higher levels of free glutamate.

[00:09:00]
For people that are really sensitive, you wouldn't want to get to this gelatinous state. You would want to do more of just a stock. With the chicken bones, under 6 hours would probably be perfect. With the beef bone, you might want to do more 10 to 12 hours. Again, I always encourage people to really pay attention to how they feel. Everyone's telling us how healing bone broth is, for us. It is for most people, but there are exceptions to every rule. I wouldn't encourage somebody to keep drinking bone broth because they think it's good for them …

Mike:
They have a headache or.

Justine:

… feel good. That's a really important point.

Mike:

[00:09:30]
Justine, there's another controversial nutrient or metabolite made by bacteria and so forth, called histamine. There's a lot of low histamine chef ideas being promoted out there, which I think are beneficial. My good friend, Dr. Ben Lynch really talks about this. A lot of people don't understand that histamine can actually cause intestinal permeability. Literally, can break up those enterocytes, those tight junctions. Another reason to potentially not use vinegar is, to minimize the histamine in the end product of the bone broth. Talk to us about histamine and some of the tips that you've learned, first starting with buying your meat products because you've provided a really great insight that I didn't hear before, about.

Justine:

[00:10:00]
Yeah, I have a lot of clients that are histamine intolerant. Originally, really reacted to their broth. I was in this camp thinking, “Why would they be reacting to bone broth? What could be causing them problems in bone broth? It's such a healing food.”

Mike:
Heals everything.

Justine:

[00:10:30]
Yeah, it's a good reminder. We are all individuals and we all have … One man's medicine is another man's poison. I really want to be an expert in understanding what changes I can make in recipes and products that I make for my clients, so that I can help enhance their health. With the low histamines, you do want to make sure that you are buying your meat fresh, or else you contact your farmer and you talk to your farmer about the duration of time that they, from butcher to the freezing period.

You do want to make sure that it's either frozen immediately, or else you are going to the market on a Thursday morning, right when the farm has delivered all their fresh meat. You're picking it up. You're either making your food immediately or else you're taking those bones or the meat and putting it in your freezer, so that you're preventing the histamine content to increase.

[00:11:00]
What I do, the tip that we were talking about earlier is just, a lot of people think that if they're buying their meat frozen, it's safe because it's frozen. What a lot of stores do and a lot of farms do is, they provide their meat fresh, to the grocery stores or to the farmer's market. Then once that meat hits the expiry date, they throw it into the freezer. People are actually buying meat that has been sitting out for a week or longer, and then frozen.

[00:11:30]

[00:12:00]
It's just important to ask those questions, especially if you're an individual that's sensitive. I make sure that I'm at the market on Thursday morning, for my low histamine clients. I pick up their bones or their meat, and it's either cooked immediately on that day. I have them on Thursday or else all their meat is put into the freezer and it's taken out, the day of coking. They know now, from education and just how they feel that, they cook the food. When I bring them the food or I'm at their house making it, whatever they're not eating that day, goes directly into the freezer.

Mike:

[00:12:30]
Wow. You've noticed a difference in those clients. You're cooking really, in theory, the same raw materials; celery and parsley and carrots and onions and so forth. It's just, the bones are being handled differently. The levels of histamine going into the product are much higher, if you don't follow these, if you're not mindful and aware of these facts that food sits on the shelf when it's “Fresh.” Then the grocery store's like “Oh, it's going to go to expiry, so we put it in the freezer.”

During that time, we see a lot of bacterial fermentation, histamine buildup. Another point to keep in mind is that endotoxin, gram-negative bacteria on the meat, it's not killed by heat. Even if you charbroil the heck out of your meat, you're still getting a lot of that endotoxin. That causes obesity, inflammation, neurologic issues and belly fat and leptin resistance and all that. That's an awesome tip.

[00:13:00]
I think people just realize or they think “Oh, I'm getting grass-fed beef. It's got to be good. Who cares if it's frozen or it's whatever. It's grass-fed. Free range or no hormones.” Excellent tip there.

Now, these low histamine clients that you're working with. Talk about the symptomatology. What are the clinical presentations? If someone's sitting here, listening and they haven't taken a quiz or a survey. They're not new. They're new to this histamine concept. What were some of your clients experience? Then, what went away after they went low histamine?

[00:13:30]
Justine:

Headaches is a big one. Itchy skin is a big one. Fatigue is a big one. Again, symptoms are different. I had one client that vomited after she had bone broth, which I'm almost embarrassed to admit because I felt so horrible. I don't think that you can really pinpoint symptoms and say that these symptoms are related to this, because our bodies are so different. The ones that I listed are probably most common. You probably know a lot more or seen a lot more.

[00:14:00]
Mike:

There's so much, yeah because histamine does so many different things. If you Google the mechanism of action of histamine, there's everything from placental growth to, you talked about headaches and things, vasoconstriction, gut integrity issues. It's pleiotropic, if you will. Histamine does a lot of things. Thanks for sharing that. Again, let's go back to vinegar. Does using vinegar increase the histamine content in the finished product of bone broth or no?

Justine:

[00:14:30]
That, I am not aware of, just because … I've never really, even looked into that, just because I don't use vinegar. As far as I'm aware, I don't think that the vinegar would increase the histamine content unless you're using vinegar and then straining the broth and putting it in the fridge and letting it sit. Then I could see that there might be an increase in histamine with the addition of the vinegar.

[00:15:00]
I think if you're following that protocol where you're getting your meat and your bones really fresh. As soon as you make the broth, you're straining it. You're either drinking it immediately or putting it in the freezer immediately. I don't know if the histamine content would vary for using vinegar or not using vinegar.

Mike:
You don't use it anyway and you get great results, so who cares. Okay, so we put in the onions and the celery.

Justine:

Yeah. These are frozen bones.

Mike:
Can you review the ratios again, on the bones?

Justine:

[00:15:30]
I use about a pound of bones for every liter of water. This is just over 2 pounds of bones. Then I'm just adding the feet. The feet are not included in that ratio. I always use a Mason jar, just to measure my water because I store the broth in Mason jars. We're going to add 1 liter of water.

Mike:
Filtered water too.

Justine:

Yeah. Filtered water, always.

Mike:
Some of the water will steam off. Is it just 1 liter in, 1 liter out or is there more that you put in?

Justine:

[00:16:00]
No. I don't find that a lot of it steams off. You do need to be really conscious of temperature. Once you bring that broth up to a simmer, you want to make sure that just hovering it at 100 degrees. You don't want a rapid boiling point because then you have the issue with glutamate. You want the simmer to be just hovering around 100. When you open the lid, it should literally be like you're looking at the broth and you should occasionally see little bubbles. What you put in, should come out.

Mike:
Interesting. I've been doing it wrong this whole time, Justine. That's really interesting. My broth is, I take it off and it burns my face with steam. We use beef bones, not chicken bones, so that could be another thing.

Justine:
[00:16:30]
Yeah, you just want a really, really, really light simmer. We're also going to add some rosemary. Again, the herbs are … Just add whatever you want. If you like sage, if you like thyme, if you like rosemary. Just play with it. Sometimes I put in oregano or Italian spice mix. It also depends on what I'm planning on making the next day for my clients.

If I'm doing … I do an Italian Pulled Pork that's a favorite among a lot of my clients. It's primarily oregano that I season the pork with. Then I'll make a broth, to cook the pork in, that's oregano, seasoned with oregano as well. You can just play with it.

[00:17:00]
Then we're going to add about a tablespoon of salt. Again, you can just play with that. I tend to have a salty palette, so I probably add more than a lot of people do. We have our broth all ready to go. There's a couple of bay leaves that we threw in there too. I put it on, bring it up to a simmer and just let it go for about 12 hours.

[00:17:30]
Again, you can play with the timing. This broth was about 12 hours and you'll get that type of gelatin content. If you want to go a little bit longer, you can. Basically, you know when the bones are done, if you can just press the bones together and they smush in your fingers. That's a good way to tell if they're, all those nutrients are out.

Mike:

[00:18:00]
That's really awesome, Justine. A few things come to mind. We only used half a thing of celery, half a stalk and 2 pounds of bone. Cost wise, a lot of people are like … This is a common question that I get asked on YouTube. “How much was that bone broth?” I admittedly have a huge stock pot, and so I try and cook a lot at once and then freeze the broth. I like how you're doing this. You can do this daily, for probably, I'm going to guess, 15 bucks, 18 bucks maybe?

Justine:

[00:18:30]
Oh, less than that. The chicken necks and backs are about $7. The meat is your most expensive. Sometimes what I do is, if I'm making it for myself, I'll take those necks and backs out after 2 hours after they have simmered. I take the meat off of the necks and backs, and I throw that in my salad or make a chicken curry or something with that meat. Again, I love the dark. I don't like breasts, so I love that dark meat. I utilize the entire part of the “Bones.”

Mike:
Let nothing go to waste.

Justine:

Yeah.

Mike:
That's awesome.

Justine:

[00:19:00]
When you use it in that way. If you were to buy a piece of meat, and you can get a lot of meat off those bones. I feel like, it's almost free. Then I'm using all the leftovers of vegetables that most people would compost, that I'm composting to put in the broth.

Mike:
That was a good tip. The onion skins and the tops or the ends. I compost those a lot, but let's say for example, someone's not making bone broth all the time but they're cooking onions and utilizing onions in their food a lot. How long were those sitting out? I'm just curious. Was that 2 days, 3 days? Does it matter?

Justine:
I used them last night. I would say, they could sit in the fridge for a couple of days. Again, because you're just, it's a flavor enhancer. It's not …
Mike:
For fiber or whatever.

[00:19:30]
Justine:

… yeah. Even just nutrition content, when you want to eat is fresh vegetables. When you're putting in your broth, it's not as much of a concern.

Mike:

[00:20:00]
Awesome. Justine, really cool. Thank you so much. If you guys have any questions or comments, please type them in below. I would love to know any feedback that you do have on this and what your experience is, using chicken bones versus beef bones? Also, not using vinegar. I'm going to start using that, Justine. I think that's an awesome tip. I never had any symptoms from using vinegar in the broth, but I may not be as sensitive to that and maybe my daughter was, and I didn't know it. Awesome tip. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate that.

Justine:

Oh, thanks so much for having me.