Bone Broth vs Meat Broth - What's the Difference?
Broth for healing from autoimmune & Lyme disease
Earlier, I talked about the GAPS diet and some of the basics that it involves for helping you heal your gut. Healing the gut, as you probably remember, is a major key to recovering from autoimmune issues, Lyme disease, or allergies.
One of the three main elements of GAPS is broth, both meat and bone broth. Are they the same?
Well, almost. Here are the differences.
Meat Broth
Made by cooking pieces of meat with joints in them, i.e. a lamb or beef shank, chicken or turkey thighs and legs)
Cooked for a shorter amount of time
Milder in flavour
Has a different profile of amino acids (i.e. glycine & proline)
Bone Broth
Cooked longer
Stronger taste
High concentration of glutamic acid & free glutamates
Marrow helps strengthen bones & connective tissues, and supports the immune system
If you have an Instant Pot, you can make bone broth really fast, even if the bones are frozen (i.e. 45 minutes to 1.5 hours).
If you only have a slow cooker, then you would want to cook the bone broth for about four to six hours. For meat broth, one to two.
If you’re cooking it on the stove, the meat broth may only take 25 minutes or so (depending on how big a piece of meat you’re cooking), and bone broth will take at least two hours.
You will have to check it along the way and see how soft the marrow has come. You’ll know it’s ready when the marrow is like jelly and you can scoop it out of the bones (you can eat that, too, if you like, but there’s a special way to cook it, apparently, that makes it more palatable. I tried eating it just like that and the texture grossed me out – it’s too slimy for my preference).
So, there you have it! Both are beneficial and both are yummy. Happy cooking!
You may be interested in my previous article Fix Your Brain by Healing Your Gut
Oh, and here’s my favourite book for the GAPS diet, the Heal Your Gut Cookbook by Hilary Boynton & Mary G. Bracket.