I guess you could call me a broth snob! Our family drinks bone broth often and I make it at home all the time.
I’ve perfected my own broth recipe and absolutely love it, so it is a big deal when I say that a broth is the best I’ve ever tasted.
Chef Lance Roll has been a chef for over 20 years and he has an amazing chicken broth that he ships all over the world. I’ve tried his broth multiple times and it is incredible, so I asked him to come on the podcast and talk about all things broth.
In this episode, we talk about the benefits and importance of bone broth and how it affects the body. He also explains how you can make your own nourishing and delicious broth and home and his special process for creating his highly concentrated and nutrient dense broth.
Lance is so passionate about real food and spreading the message of the importance of broth. He sells his own amazing broth at TheBrothery.com but he also hopes that everyone listening will start consuming broth whether it is his or their own homemade broth!
Some of the Benefits of Bone Broth
- Helps maintain or improve gut health
- Aids digestion
- Great for healthy hair, skin and nails
- Rich in vitamins and minerals
- Contains beneficial amino acids proline and glycine
- Soothing and calming
Resources We Mention
- TheBrothery.com – source for superfood broth
- Article: Homemade Bone Broth Tutorial (Wellness Mama)
- Nourishing Broth Book by Sally Fallon More
- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
- 520: Kevin Ellis on Osteoporosis and Building Stronger Bones
[toggle title=”Read Transcript”]
Katie: Hi, and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast, where I provide simple answers for healthier families. Did you know that there is a reason that homemade chicken soup is a first line of defense in an illness and that it’s served in hospitals? Though unfortunately, a lot of hospitals have switched to the artificial MSG-infused versions. But broth or stock has a long history as a nourishing super food that supports joint health, skin and hair and nails strength, gut health, illness recovery, and so much more, but we’ve lost this traditional food in our culture. Today’s guest and I are here to talk about why we need to make this super food popular again.
Chef Lance Roll has been a professional chef for 25 years. He’s the owner and president of The Flavor Chef, which was founded in 2007. It’s an organic catering company and farm-to-table company in brothery that uses only local and organic ingredients and sustainable food products. And I’ve had the pleasure of eating his cooking before and it’s also absolutely delicious. So, Chef Lance, welcome and thank you so much for being here.
Lance: Thank you, Katie. I’m so excited to talk to your audience today about this amazing product I’ve been making and dreaming about for a long time.
Katie: Yeah, well, and I’d love to jump in with that because I know I became a huge fan of broth when we did the GAPS protocol and reversed my son’s dairy allergy, but I’d love to hear your story of how you got into broth.
Lance: Sure, you know, again, 25 years of cooking led up to about 2007. I started in 1988 and in 2007 I was introduced…I left the formal professional side of the business. I was teaching culinary and I began my own business, I became an entrepreneur at that point. Fortunately, I was introduced to a man named Paul Chek who is one of my mentors, and the Chek Institute out here in Vista, California. And, you know, Paul was a big proponent of the WAPF, Weston A. Price Foundation, nourishing traditions and the diet that we followed basically before World War I. The diet is our great grandmothers and grandfathers ate prior to the introduction of processed foods.
Weston A. Price was a dentist who went around in the 1930s, studying traditional cultures and discovering that when they were introduced to what we would consider the SAD diet of today, they would physically degenerate. His book, “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” has been popular and, of course, sold by the Weston A. Price Foundation, goes into many details about that.
The long story short there, Katie, is I met…after 18 years of solid high-end experience nurturing my God-given ability, you know, God gives many gifts to people and my gift was cooking and flavors and just my art is in food and culinary arts and I’ve been blessed with that, and turn that into an organic locally-sourced real food type of movement. It was the beginning, I mean, I feel like it was sort of already there but the real food movement was just getting its feet on the ground. And the Weston A. Price Foundation has always been there. So I got a hold of “Nourishing Traditions,” Sally Fallons’ first book and just started tearing through it and changing the way I cooked.
I started cooking for Paul Chek in the Check Institute and I was quickly introduced to bone broth and the idea that this broth I’ve been making, the stock I’ve been making for years, has incredible health benefits that go well beyond the delicious addition to your diet and your food,into so many other things. In particular, I was doing a lot of transformation in 2007. And on November 11th, of 2007, 11-11-07, I literally got a download from above. And I’ll just say that in terms of God and my relationship with Spirit and the world, and that was it to bring this product that I have now to market.
And I literally just went home, I wrote down a bunch of notes about how I could do it. I was getting all this inspiration and I called my buddy on the phone, I said, “Hey, I gotta bring this product to market.” So I started making it and researching it and just started finding more and more information about the benefits of this product, and searching the internet, finding articles from 2005 from townsend newsletter and all the different things were out there. And started making it for my clients on a regular basis. I was inspired again by the Weston A. Price leader out here, Kim Schuette, to around 2011. This is three four, years later now, to make the product for her clients.
So I was literally started putting it in containers and there was a whole process of finding labels and getting all that stuff going. And then in early 2012, I was, you know, wanted to bring this to retail market, so I did the investigation. I got my kitchen certified by the state of California to be legal to produce food with the correct label, nutrition facts label, all the things that go into that. And in April of 2012, I started selling broth locally in stores, here in San Diego. I literally, again, just kind of entrepreneurship, just learning as I go.
And through that year, I’ve met a gal named Christa Orecchio, who is one of my food clients out here. I’m sure you know Christa. And she introduced me to a guy named Sean Croxton who’s “Underground Wellness” and a good friend of both of ours as well. And in October of that year, we did a podcast similar to this, talking about bone broth and the benefits of bone broth, and we ended up getting inundated with calls to ship our product around the country.
And so in January of 2013, we opened up thebrothery.com and it was literally just our shipping site. And we figured out how to get the products from the kettle to temperature very quickly so it stays cold and get it safely into containers and ship it frozen around the country and we’ve grown that tremendously the last couple years. We literally…and then, of course, we grow to our local retail business as well. We’ve perfected our product and we love it. It’s genuine chicken bone broths and it’s… Some of the big news here. I’ll make my first public announcement, we have started the process to get organic-certified. So our product already is 100% organic and we are now using one of the organic certifiers out here to get our product with the USDA organic symbol on it.
Katie: That’s awesome. And as I said, I had your broth myself and I can attest to how good it is. And that’s amazing that you chose to announce here that it’s gonna be certified organic as well. That’s wonderful. You and I are both so much on the same page about the benefits of broth and the amazing things it can do for your health, so let’s delve into that. What are some of the things that you have seen broth do for people and for their health and for their vitality and just all aspects of their life?
Lance: Well, you know, Katie, I wanted to mention as well that this new book on broth has just come out from Sally Fallon and Kaayla Daniel called “Nourishing Broth: An Old Fashioned Remedy for the Modern World.” And it goes through many, many testimonies. You hear of how broth has affected people’s lives. I could say right off the top that my own life and skin and hair and nails are all very healthy. My digestive tract has never been better. I use broth on a regular basis obviously.
But, yeah, we have seen with our clients some of the most important ones we’ve had are a client who is depleted from chemotherapy and they began drinking our broth and literally said their blood counts and their white and red blood cells had never been better till after they started drinking our bone broth. And that was just one particular case. We’ve had people tell us that joints have healed up, and just the healing process is really promoted by bone broth in so many different ways, especially through the healing of the digestive tract.
Another one of our great testimonies is the kicker for the Chargers, Nick Novak, and he’s been a client of ours. He is kicking for the team right now, of course. And he’s been using our product to heal his foot and his leg and I don’t think he’s…I think he’s kicking pretty well right now. I don’t follow football but he’s been a good client and he’s got a good testimony for our product. So, yeah, those are some of the great stories we have about it. Again, we said that we did have a lot of people as well just getting general comfort. With the cancer patients, the chemotherapy really takes people pretty hard and it helps them just keep their…you know, it’s such a comforting food. It’s so easy to digest because it’s basically a nutrient dense food that’s full of these amino acid profiles and gelatin and the protein as well that helps them really feel better. So…
Katie: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I’ll add my own testimonial that I mentioned on the blog before, but my son was born prematurely and had digestive issues for a lot of his early life and allergies and eczema and skin problems and behavior problems. And we used broth extensively as part of his regenerating diet and using the GAPS protocol to help seal and heal his gut issues and it’s just amazing the transformation he had.
Lance: I wanna give a little personal testimony as well. My wife and I, are both a little bit older to say the least, but we did a preconception diet that included broth and there is some information in this book as well for, you know, a preconception, during pregnancy as well. All the benefits of bone broth gives to the mom who is literally being stolen of nutrients. We ended up having a very healthy son who was also born prematurely. And one of his first foods was broth as well. And Dylan is four and a half now and he’s pretty much got a really, really strong immune system and he’s been, you know, he doesn’t get sick when the other kids get sick in school, and he drinks his broth and we give…Of course, his other protocols. Definitely on cod liver oil right now and probiotics. So those three things are trifecta that really help your health.
Katie: Oh for sure, yeah, our children and…Well, my husband and I also take all of those every day and that’s a great point. I should have mentioned that as well that we give bone broth as a first food for our babies because it really helps seal their gut lining, and babies naturally have a leaky gut and that’s designed like that. They’re supposed to because when they’re nursing the antibodies from their mother can pass through their gut into their bloodstream and they can develop natural immunity. But when you start giving them food and especially if you, whatever, give them processed food, you don’t want that passing through their gut and into their bloodstream. And broth is a great way to just help their body naturally seal that before you start giving them a wider variety of foods. And we didn’t know that with our first couple unfortunately, but the younger kids who we did that with it’s just amazing that how much they’re thriving and their immune systems are great and they’re so muscular and healthy.
Lance: Yeah, that’s the same with Dylan. I could show you…I’ll send you a picture for the blog of my incredible son and his body and his teeth are amazing. You know, he’s really got amazing teeth and smile and he’s a handsome kid, to say the least, as well.
Katie: Well, that’s awesome, and congratulations on a healthy pregnancy at an older age. I know that’s a big accomplishment in itself. And I know traditional cultures for years have used broth and other super foods as a part of a pre-conception diet. So I love that you guys did that. And another thing that, I think, people don’t often know about broth is that it’s actually really beneficial for the body’s detoxification pathways. So can you talk about how broth naturally helps the body flush out toxins and how it naturally builds the immune system?
Lance: Yeah I mean, the thing with the broth is that those things you talk about are from the amino acid profiles that are in broth, the glycine, proline, the hydroxyproline, lysine. Those are all important for detoxification and I don’t know, again, I always tell people at this point of the podcast, I’m not the scientist, I’m more of the chef but those are the items that you, literally people purchase to detox their bodies. This is naturally occurring from the extraction of the bones in the soup. In our process, Katie, we have a 24-hour process to make our product. It starts with cold water and apple cider vinegar. It comes to a simmer, we bring it up to a simmer, we skim the initial skim off, we add our vegetables, then we simmer at a low temperature for 18 hours. These a product that has 60% feet to 40% backs, meaning you’re getting a ton of those, that collagen and gelatin that releases from the bones and the joints and it’s all goes to support those areas.
So it terms of detoxification, I mean, one of the main things you’re trying to do in detoxification is heal your gut. And it’s, kind of, a synergistic thing which is also mentioned in this beautiful book but it works in conjunction with the other things that you’re doing to help you maintain a, you know, 80% of your immune system is located in your gut. So when you start healing that gut, you synergistically help everything else, and so that, to me, is the main key in detoxification and just promoting…One of our trademarks is the smiley face and the smiley face says, “Broth is good for you. It promotes a healthier you.”
In other words it’s not the silver bullet so to speak, although Sally and Kaayla mentioned in here a couple, it is a silver bullet for certain conditions, meaning that someone is gonna sort of pierce and help really push you over the edge to healing. But it promotes so much healing in the gut and it promotes all the other wellness areas of your body that you’re trying to help. So it stimulates the immune system with minerals and, again, it’s just the joint support, the collagen support, those things like that. So there’s all kinds of conditions it helps with as well that are listed in here. So if you’re fighting infectious disease, you know, it’s been mentioned that broth is Jewish penicillin and there’s good scientific reason behind that.
Katie: I love that.
Katie: Yeah. Jewish penicillin. I love that quote. That’s so funny. And actually that brings up a good point. I would love for you to talk about the distinction between the broth that you make that has a very long involved traditional process and that has all these minerals and nutrients and things like glucasomine that support the joints, compared to just the broth you would buy in a grocery store or that might be served in most hospitals, or like a bullion cube that you could just dissolve. What’s the difference between those two?
Lance: The biggest difference, of course, is time and energy and really the initial sourcing of the ingredients. You know, one of…Again, I’ll talk about our product. Our product is 100% organic. We’re going for organic certification meaning we don’t have any GMOs in our product. The chickens we use are sourced from Mary’s Chicken in Petaluma. They are organic or higher. And there are, you know, there’s all stuff about them on their website. Typically, when you get into a boxed broth basically you have a high heat, fast cooked product that gets reduced down mostly to a powder, and then they reinfuse it with water, color, sugar, and other things. Even if it’s organic “free range broth,” for the most part.
Again, I don’t know exactly how they get it into the box but they can get it into a box and sell a quart for about $2. And if you pour them out, in the book there’s one page that says, you know, “Just pour bone broth out,” or what they call chicken broth accompanying quotations or, you know, organic free range, whatever they’re calling it beef broth and it’s just water basically. It’s just basically flavored water that does help with soups and things but in terms of the healing process. I mean, our product is handmade. Again, we have one kettle, going to two. And we basically simmer the bone on for 18 hours at about a, what Kaayla Daniel calls a gurgle. A slight simmer that allows upward convection in the broth.
It’s important we can talk about stock pot and broth making on your own in a minute, but it’s important for the release of all the ingredients that are in the bones and things, the marrow that comes out of the bones and the electrolyte to come out of the vegetables and all those different things that we put in our product versus a, you know, quickly made, get it out to the, you know, get it in a box that could sit on a shelf, and package broth that you get in the store or bullion cube, of course, it’s just there. Even with, you know, you can get good gelatin products in a form like that and there’s Knox gelatin and different things that, you know, the Great Lakes gelatin and stuff which I think is a really great thing. It’s just not the beauty and the flavor and all the other components you get out of a genuine bone broth, a liquid product. So I hope that helps.
Katie: Yeah, that’s great. And I completely echo what you say. I think gelatin is awesome and it has its place isolated. I know I use it to make things like organic marshmallows for my kids or homemade fruit snacks or homemade vitamins but it doesn’t replace broth. It complements it, but it never replaces it. And one thing, I think, a lot of people also get confused by is what is the difference between broth and stock? Because you see those terms used almost interchangeably but there is a difference. Can you talk about that?
Lance: Sure. Again, mostly stock, I would say, is something you make in a kitchen, you know, for producing soup. All the years I cooked professionally, we never called it broth, we always called it stock. And those are generally cooked a lot faster. They were made…cook a lot faster meaning like we would do chicken bones in four hours, we would do a veal or beef bones in about 10 hours and that will be it. You know, we basically we’re making a decent quality flavored liquid that we could use for making our chicken sauces, for making our beef sauces, our lamb sauces, our duck sauces, whatever we were doing.
And, again Katie, fortunately, for me, I was in a restaurant and my restaurant background came from a place we actually did that. I was in European style kitchens where we had stock pots going all the time but that’s not even that regular anymore in even regular restaurants, you know. For people have stock pots going, it usually takes a European trained chef to be in there.
So the difference, well, broth is basically meant to be eaten. Broth is something that you’re going to add… It’s usually technically it has more meat in it and we use meaty bones, feet, and meaty back bones, and that would be a good way to start with the biggest difference between stock and broth. And broth is something you’re gonna basically, like I said, you’re gonna consume that as a consumable product. Our broth is meant to be used in soups and stews, but can easily be consumed on its own just with a little pinch of salt or whatever you… You know, we have some recipes that we’ll have out ow you can use our product. And, of course, this new book as well. I keep referring to it. It’s full of recipes and things you can do with your products and different broths you can make in things, but that’s the biggest one.
Katie: Yeah, definitely. And one of my favorite, I’m a big fan of thinking outside the box and my doctor Dr. Christianson talks a lot about how the foods that we normally eat for breakfast are actually really horrible choices for breakfast that you actually don’t want to consume a lot of carbohydrates in the morning. They’re better to consume at night as far as your cortisol patterns and all that. So one thing I started doing that makes breakfast so easy again is to consume broth for breakfast with vegetables and meat in it and just make breakfast soup. And it’s especially in the fall and winter, it’s so satisfying and wakes you up and so much better than coffee. And it’s so simple. You just have to kind of rethink the normal breakfast idea.
And on that note, I would love for you to talk us through the actual process of how a person can make broth, because I know obviously you sell it and yours is delicious, but you’re also a broth evangelist of sorts and you want people to get it in their lives however they can. And a lot of people may be able to make it in their own home. So can you talk us through that process and what you would need and how you would do it and how to accomplish it in your own kitchen?
Lance: Absolutely. I love that term. Did you say broth angelus or something?
Katie: Yeah, broth evangelist.
Lance: Broth evangelist. I like it. That’s the first I’ve ever heard that. That’s great. Yeah, you know, it is so true. I mean, making good broth at home is, again, it’s a fairly simple process. It’s just, you know, the… So what you would do…I mean, again you could talk about different broths, people talk about the benefit of fish broth and beef broth and other things like that, but, again, just sticking with the basic like chicken broth, you know. You know, you just get a whole chicken. The main thing, Katie, is to get a good source, a well-grown chicken. You know, if you can get locally-grown chickens and you can ask the local farmer if you have them or they’re there for feed in some backs, or maybe save up some bones from some roasted chicken. Again, just try to get enough. The biggest thing people make is not enough bones, more liquid, you know. So we literally use a pound of bones per quart of liquid, you know, and you know, so again a whole chicken just simply put it in a pot.
Again, the recipes are in this new book “Nourishing Broth” but…and there’s recipes on the internet. I love to put in carrots, celery, onions. They recommend acid component like apple cider vinegar. I always throw…our product contains a few lemons as well for flavor. Some bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme. These are all herbs that are generally put in the broth with parsley going in at the end. Again, you can quantify it or not but the process would be to place them all on a pot, bring that pot to temperature, meaning, you know, bring it up to a boil quickly. And I’ll make a point here. If you ‘re gonna use a slow cooker which a lot of people do, I would recommend using a pot first. In other words, don’t use the slow cooker to bring your broth to temperature. It’s probably gonna take too long to get to that boiling point. So what you wanna do is put all your ingredients in the pot, bring it to temperature, then transfer it to the slow cooker. And you’ll have to adjust a slow cooker, like I said, you don’t really want a violent boil.
You will want one for the first skim when that comes up ,and then you skim with that little stuff that comes to the top called the scum. And then you, you know, you let it simmer at that point for as long as you can let it simmer. I mean, people have different ideas of that. I like, when I was making it at home and then doing it in small batches, I just left it on my stove and, you know, put a crack in the window and let it go overnight. And some people think it’s dangerous but I think if it’s electric stove, for one, it wouldn’t be, for two, even with the gas stove it’s not really… as long as you have a window open, it’s pretty safe.
And, you know, you just got to judge it on your own in your house, but point is, is you wanna simmer that at a low temperature. Again, with chicken meat, what I typically do about using the whole chicken is take the meat off the bone at about an hour when the meat is cooked so that could be used for chicken salads or things like that, and then you leave the bones in there with the vegetables and let them simmer for anywhere from again 8 to 24 hours and you can test it a little bit from time to time the flavor. Test the gelatin by just leaving some small amount in the refrigerator for a couple minutes and see if it gels up. If it’s got the right gel in it, then maybe you turn it off. So it’s all kind of like trial and error at that point.
With beef bones, beef is generally, you wanna use a grass-fed beef. That means the cows have been probably on pasture for anywhere from 18, little as 18 and as much as 3 years on pasture. That means those bones are gonna be a lot harder to get the minerals out of. So you probably need to simmer those from 24 to 48 hours. And again that’s probably gonna be that’s where the slow cooker would come in really handy. And one thing to note as well as get those bones as small as you can. If your butcher can cut them small or you can get them cut down because exactly is it more surface space to release more of those nutrients into your broth.
A lot of recipes don’t have vegetables in them, I like putting vegetables in the broth. It tastes really good. I think the flavor profiles are there, it releases a lot of stuff out of the vegetables. Some people have me put the vegetables in at the end. Again, I just do it the way I do it and I’ve done it that way for many years with a lot of success so you wanna…And then you strain it the process would be to cool the product down quickly which means you need to be prepared for that, you’re gonna strain it through a chinois or a fine mesh strainer of some kind into some glass or stainless steel containers that are long and shallow so the broth can cool quickly. And then you want to transfer it into containers that you can have in the refrigerator or the freezer.
So that’s kind of the whole process and, you know, it is trial and error. Each home is different. Each, you know, chickens are different. I would say one of the keys would be, you know, the more the merrier when it comes to bones you know, I mean, you wanna make the right amount for the amount of you wanna make enough broth the bones you have but people always question is, “My broth didn’t jelly,” you know. And I would say, “Don’t worry about it, drink the broth anyways. It’s got a lot of good stuff in it. Next time just use a little less water or a little more bones. And the temperature, too, it needs to be a slow gurgle as we’ve been told.”
Katie: Yeah, that’s really helpful. I know in the beginning I don’t think I was using enough bones. But I was definitely afraid of chicken feet when I first started making broth because that just the idea that I was raised in the city and I had to get over that. And it really does take some trial and error but broth, especially when you had that right jelling component in it, I found from researching that it’s really high-end amino acids that we don’t get enough of like proline and glycine.
Lance: Absolutely.
Katie: Yeah and those are calming amino acids and so I noticed, as a mom, that my kids are much more calm and still energetic but that they’re behaviorally more calm and more focused when they’re regularly consuming broth so it’s pretty much always in our kitchen in some form.
Lance: And that’s fantastic. Yeah, I was gonna say, too, you know, we have two products at the brothery.com and a lot of people ask us the difference. One of our products is called “two-hour meat stock” and that is literally the broth for the GAPS protocol, phase one. And, again, we, you know, it’s always encouraged to make your own broth but we do find that most people just don’t wanna take the time to do it and it’s a high impact society, people are rushing here, rushing there, and, you know, one of the great things about broth is if you can get it into your protocol is it does help you think about things, slow down, enjoy life, you know, make this beautiful product, infuse your own energy into it.
Anyway back to the two-hour product. The two-hour product is we call “meat stock.” And, again, we just can’t use the term “GAPS” because we’re not you know, authorized to use it but it is for the GAPS phase one protocol and it’s a two-hour stock that has less glutamic acid in it. So less glutamine which is in the Gaps protocol could somewhat irritate that overly, the deeply compromised gut that you’re trying to heal, you know. And that symptoms from that particular protocol that’s being prescribed. So we have that product and it’s a lighter in color, it does add salt. I would say that our regular broth does not have any salt in it and we do that for many reasons, but mostly that people can just add a pinch of sea salt to their cup of broth or to when they use it. We didn’t wanna put it in there for people that are salt-restricted. And with the GAPS part, it does have a small amount of salt in there. So…
Katie: Yeah, and that is I wish I had known about yours as we were doing and although it might have been before actually you guys were producing that type of product, but we used to serve the meat stock like that at the beginning of the GAPS protocol and that’s, I mean, largely all you’re consuming for a little while and yet it really made a difference for him and for our son and then being able to transition to full broth and he did great with it. So that’s the god thing about the GAPS intro. it’s not forever. It’s for a very short time and then you’re able to start using the full blown broth again.
Lance: Yeah, that’s exactly right.
Katie: Exactly. So since you are a classically trained chef I would love to hear you talk about some of the ways that you use broth because I typically default to just soup or just drinking it because that’s the easiest way, but I know that there are literally thousands of uses that chefs would use it for in a traditional kitchen. So talk about some of the ways you can incorporate it especially maybe for moms who have a child who’s not jumping up and down about drinking it, how can we use it in food instead?
Lance: Well, one thing I will say, too, since I just have a child, my son, he did not like to drink it but he loved to eat it out of the jar so he would simply put it, you know, the gelatin was really exciting to him so we’d say, “Hey, you want some gelatin?” Yeah, I need to stick a spoon in there and eat it. Yeah there’s so many different ways you use broth. I mean, again simplest way is to heat it up cup of soup. I’ve been finding lately just adding some different ingredients to it. We specially love adding like coconut milk or coconut fat, using like a coconut butter to stir in there. Again it’s still just basically a cup a soup like you said of course, many soups. And then you get to things like brazes and roasts and vegetables and rice, grains, legumes. So when you talk about wanting to incorporate say you know, you if you’re on a grain-free diet or not then we can, you know, what’s meant by certainly is the grain-free diet but it definitely encourages you to cook grains with your bone broth.
So, again, so it’s gonna add to digestibility, the flavor, the nutrition profile, everything about cooking grains in broth is amazing. And then, you know, you’re bean cookery. If you’re using black beans, white beans, lentils. Making those type of dishes, you can cook those beans in broth and that broth becomes, again, aids in indigestion and the digestibility of those grains because that seems to be one of the arguments against grains and beans is their digestibility, but when you soak them properly and then cook them in broth, it really helps and add some really good fiber and other things that that those have for your diet.
And then there’s what we call a braze. And brazing is simply taking like your chicken or your beef, it’s similar to a stew, it’s a little bit different than a stew but…and then you would simply like, for instance, when I make Brussels sprouts love to use Brussels sprouts and I’ll use a really good quality bacon, some onions, get those Brussels sprouts go and add a cup and a half of broth, and then that broth just kind of soaks in and we kind of put the lid on the top, slowly cook in the Brussels sprouts till it’s all absorbed in there. And when you make a braze, all the nutrients are packed into whatever you eat there. It doesn’t escape the pot. So brazing vegetables is a really good way to use broth.
If you have to reheat your food, say you know, most people like to, they can’t cook every day so they might make a dish that they need to eat two or three times during the week, adding some broth to that when you put it in the pot to reheat it, you know, you make a pot of rice and then you add a half a cup of broth like you said for breakfast lately I’ve been doing the same thing. I just like, well, there are some cold chicken, there are some carrots, there are some broccoli, put a cup of broth and throw it into the pot, simmer it up, poured it in my cup and that’s breakfast, you know. Another great way to use broth.
Making a stew, again we’re getting into Winter season, it’s a little colder around the country. People are thinking more about these foods, simmering a squash like butternut squash. Again, if you know how to make a butternut squash soup or again make a brazee out of it and then a stew. We’re gonna be releasing some videos with this summit coming up called The Digestive Sessions and I made the paleo one pot Thai chicken soup, you know, and it was just basically chicken brazed with coconut milk and chicken broth and some Thai style flavor and vegetables and just a great way to incorporate broth into your diet. If that helps.
Katie: Yeah, those are great ideas, thank you. Yeah those are excellent. And one thing I know a lot of moms may be wondering, I know I was part of the generation that got really drill into us about food safety and making sure things are, you know, put in the fridge right away and not leaving anything out. So for people wondering, how are you able to ship this around the country safely? I would love to hear about that process as well.
Lance: Sure. Well, first of all we do take the product down from the kettle to the freezer in about three hours so we have a way of just spreading it out and putting it in these big stainless steel pans, and cool it really quickly so when we pack the broth we’ve, you know, we freeze it in these containers and it’s frozen at about, you know, minus five or so which is the proper temperature. And then we ship it, we use an insulated container, you know, the best ones we can get. We pack it with ice packs and dry ice and seal it up good and send it. The only way we can afford to do right now is FedEx ground and it takes about four days to get to the East Coast and we’ve had about almost 100% satisfaction over the last… We’ve had 100% satisfaction overall but meaning you know, once in a while FedEx will…basically every time it doesn’t make is when FedEx doesn’t deliver the product. But yeah that’s how it stays safe, with dry ice in there. If the product is even slightly defrosted it’s still safe because that means it’s at 32 degrees or less and makes it safely around the country all the time. Anyone in California, West coast, we never had any issues of up to a three day shipment even in Texas. So Texas, where you are in Kentucky, that’s like a three-day shipment so it gets there cold and frozen.
Katie: Yeah, that’s awesome. And another thing I would love for you to clarify for people is what’s a good rule of thumb about how much broth we should consume daily? I know I’ve seen benefits from adding even just a couple cups a day but what’s a good rule of thumb of how much we should drink?
Lance: Yeah, again, you know, right to the experts Kaayla and Sally, they’re saying about a cup a day for average people who are just trying to improve their health as we like to say optimizing their health and the benefits of eating nutrient dense foods. Again, a lot of the articles in here are, you know, you combining fermented foods, from eating whole foods, eating vegetables, eating pasteurized meats, pasteurized poultry, wild fish if you’re going to eat fish. You know, organically-grown vegetables, locally-sourced items. So, yes, so bone broth, again, if you’re working with a naturopathic doctor or chiropractor or someone who’s an expert, then you really want to go with what their protocol is. They may say, “Yeah you need two to three cups a day right now. That’s what gonna help you get well faster.”
And a lot of them times, we say, you know, four servings, six ounces per in each container and, you know, six ounces per serving and try to drink one in the morning and one at night. Again, you say it’s calming, which it is and there’s ingredients in it that help you relax a little bit. It’s a comfort food. So I think the way we’ve been talking about it morning and night is a great time to drink it. If you have it before or with your meal, you know, Frances Pottinger talked about broth being hydrophylic in nature, and that means it just helps you digest the proteins, the cooked proteins that you are digesting. That’s what broth does.
So, yes, so broth with your meal at night is a great idea or as your meal with vegetables and meat in it or whatever. And, you know, like I said, I do this digestive session video we had it you know, coconut cream, which is a concentrate and then we added a little slice of lemon and a little mint and some cayenne pepper and a little bit of mint cayenne pepper and it really made beautiful flavor and allowed all those items all help to promote digestion, so…
Katie: That sounds delicious, yeah.
Lance: It is good.
Katie: Well, I want to respect your time and everyone listening’s time so we’re getting toward the end but I have a few questions that I ask everybody that comes on the podcast and I’d love to hear your answers.
Lance: Sure.
Katie: And the first one is, when it comes to health or life or any aspect, what is some advice you wish you had gotten earlier in life?
Lance: I wish I got earlier in life. Probably, I think, exercise would be the most thing. I think that’s been the biggest key lately in my life, is that I didn’t exercise for a while. I didn’t think it was necessary and I think exercise is probably one of the keys to good health. Regular walking when you just be walking, swimming, you know, jogging whenever, whatever your passion is, mine is yoga and golf, and things like that. But, you know, just getting out there and being patient. And also my, you know, my trademark, “Love is the ultimate spice,” you know. If you’re in a situation, I was, you know, past life situation wasn’t optimum but when I discovered to see everything through the eyes of love, my whole life changed, you know. And so we put love in the food, we put love energy in the food and we coined the term and own the phrase, “Love is the ultimate spice.” So…
Katie: Those are both great. Yeah, thank you so much.
Lance: Sure.
Katie: And another I ask, and I can make a guess as to what you’re going to say, but what is a great resource that you’ve come across that you want others to, you know, to share with others that you thought has been really valuable to you?
Lance: A great resource? Again, I wanna say the Weston A. Price Foundation and this idea of eating real food. I mean, we are in a real food movement, Katie, and we are fighting an uphill battle. I mean, I just got to the grocery store, it’ just sad, you know, to see what people are buying and ingesting and, you know, that’s a great resource to have around. Find yourself a great place that you can meditate and, you know, seek out higher purpose in life, you know, that’s gonna be different for everybody in a different place. I don’t have any thing to preach about there but just, you know, find a place where you can really find yourself and love yourself to the point that you can help others, you know.
Katie: Definitely. And then lastly, for someone maybe who’s listening and realizing they do need to start incorporating bone broth into their life but the idea just seems overwhelming, what are some simple quick start steps to start doing that without being so overwhelmed?
Lance: Well, you know, again it’s just gonna be one of those like priority things, you know. And Paul Check, my mentor, would say, you know, “People don’t make food, the fuel they’re putting in their body a priority.” You know, you’ve got to change your priorities, you know, what is your priority in life? To make money and get the next text then be on the next Facebook post? Or, is it to, you know, be centered, be healthy, health is the wealth as Paul Check would say. And, you know, to prioritize food and energy, the energy of food that goes into your life, into your body, you know.
So I would say making that a priority and, again, we have a product that we sell and ship not to just keep promoting it but you know, that’s what a lot of people have told us, Katie. They love broth, they believe in broth and they just don’t wanna make it. So, you know, we have a great resource there that has to be sold but that would be one thing you can do and just make your health a priority.
Katie: Excellent. And I know I created a link which is wellnessmama.com/go/broth which is gonna link to some of your resources, especially your site where they can find broth if they do wanna purchase it, but please tell everybody listening where they can find you and where they can find your products.
Lance: Sure. I am on the web at the flavorchef.com. We have our shipping site and we’re moving all of our information over there right now to thebrothery.com. And lastly, if you listen to this last part, we are gonna be starting and I think you mentioned Kickstarter but to raise somebody but you have those two places where you can find our product and our information and of course on Facebook @theflavorchef. And those would be the three I would say would be the easiest way to get a hold of us.
Katie: Awesome and I’ll make sure to link to all of that in the show notes as well as to the new book that are about broth so that they can find that as well.
Lance: Yes, absolutely.
Katie: But thank you so much for your time and for being here and for being so passionate about broth and traditional food and spreading the word and for all the time that you put into making broth for so many people.
Lance: We do. Okay. Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you so much.
Katie: Thanks, and thanks to all of you for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast where I provide simple answers for healthier families. If you would like to get my “Seven Simple Steps for Healthier Families Guide” for free, head on over to wellnessmama.com and enter your email and I’ll send it over to you right away. You can also stay in touch on social media, facebook.com/endlesswellness or on Twitter and Instagram @WellnessMama.
And I would also really appreciated if you would take a second and subscribe to this podcast so that you’ll be notified of future episodes. And if you’ve ever benefited from something I talked about on this podcast, I’d be really appreciative if you would leave a rating or a review since that’s how others are able to find this podcast and so we can help spread the message. Thanks as always for listening and for reading and for being on board with creating a future for our children that’s healthier and happier. And until next time, have a healthy week.
[/toggle]
Check out this episode and let me know in the comments below how you use broth!
Leave a Reply