Bone Broths Co. Beef Bone Broth Review

The Bone Broths Co. Beef Bone Broth couldn’t have come at a better time.

My family and I were gone for the last holiday weekend and we’re pretty sure our daughter was getting sick, which eventually leads to my wife and I getting sick. This, coupled with a busy week at work, didn’t really lend time for me to make my own bone broth from scratch at an attempt to fight whatever cold might be coming our way. So the week goes by and my wife and I feel worse as each day goes on, leaving me wishing I had stored up bone broth in the freezer – which I don’t.

Jillian, aka Patient Zero, thought the whale wanted to be in the product shot.

Enter Bone Broth Co.

They are the first to sell a shelf stable grass fed bone broth. They were generous enough to send a box my way for review. At this moment I couldn’t be happier because this is where a product like this shines: you don’t have enough time to get ahead of a cold or sickness to slow simmer bones for 24+ hours. This product enables me to grab for some shelf stable superfood that I didn’t have to prepare myself.

Superfood you say?

Why is bone broth a superfood you ask? Bone broth is unique among the typical stocks you find in your grocery store because of how long the bones are simmered for. Typical broth in stores or the broth you learn to make right off the bat in culinary school only simmers bones and vegetables for about 45 minutes – 2 hours. Stock, as opposed to broth, is simmered a little longer at 3–4 hours. But bone broth is normally simmered 24+ hours. The reason this is so beneficial for the body, especially when you’re sick is because of 3 main things that come out in the simmering process. Mark Sisson points out these three things in this post, but in short it’s this: Gelatin, Hyaluronic acid and Chondroitin sulfate. Not to mention the abundance of minerals, bone marrow and collagen found in the bones as well. These nutrients are all derived from the bones, joints and cartilage that you wouldn’t otherwise consume or eat necessarily. Being that this particular bone broth comes from grass fed cows, which increases the nutrient density of this particular animal, means that the nutrients you’re getting from these bones is that much better for you than from a cow not fed a pastured diet. The latter nutrient for example, Chondroitin sulfate, is normally what’s found in glucosamine supplements to help with joint pain. The most important nutrient in the bone broth, in my opinion, is the gelatin. Gelatin has been found to reduce joint pain and to improve your quality of sleep. And with how important sleep is overall, and when you’re sick in particular, it’s a great thing to incorporate gelatin into your diet when your trying to get over a sickness.

I love this write up that the fat burning man wrote up where he analyzes the typical Campbell’s chicken noodle soup ingredients and he points out how un-nutritious all the things are: MSG, cornstarch, soy protein, wheat. It’s pretty terrible. The reality is, if your sick or getting sick you shouldn’t go buy some off the shelf stock chicken water. You should make your own bone broth or if you’re out of time you should buy some shelf stable grass fed bone broth.

But you drink it out of a mug?

Now ideally we should be using bone broth all the time in various ways in addition to how I’m going to review it here by just drinking it straight out of a mug. You can also follow Bone Broths Co. Instagram where they post a bunch of recipes of how to use their bone broth. Or if you’re ok eating white rice you can use the bone broth as the liquid to cook it as The Domestic Man points out in his book The Ancestral Table. Essentially you can use this in any place a stock is called for in a recipe but it will just be a sort of superfood added to any dish.

Even Shailene Woodley, the actress from The Divergent Series, thinks it’s a superfood.

Got bone broth? #ShaileneWoodley shares her delicious recipe. #Insurgent

A photo posted by Late Show with David Letterman (@letterman) on Mar 16, 2015 at 7:24pm PDT

Now I’d still like to treat this as a regular product review where we look at the nutritional profile, affordability and taste. So let’s get into it.

Nutritional Profile

For those of you who know about bone broth, you don’t really pay attention to the nutrition facts label like you would other foods, like say cricket bars. You want to look at the quality of the ingredients that will be simmered for 24+ hours. That’s where Bone Broths Co. gets it right. Every batch of their beef bone broth is made with bones from 100% grass fed, pasture grazed cattle that are antibiotic and hormone free. They also use all organic vegetables, sea salt and herbs. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t get better than that. All that nutrition in that pastured animal will reveal itself in those slow simmered bones once the simmering is over.

As we’ve already covered. Bone broth and stock in your traditional grocery store are not the same thing. The stock in the stores is just flavored chicken or beef water. So to compare the nutrition of that to this bone broth is no competition. You just won’t find the Gelatin and minerals found in this bone broth in anything else in store shelves (unless of course your store carries Bone Broth Co.)

Affordability

So how do you really address affordability? Regular stock in the stores is about $2-$4 for a 32oz container. This bone broth is about $12 for 17.6oz. That’s about 3x more expensive than chicken or beef flavored water. But that’s not what you should compare this to. You need to compare the price of the bone broth to the time it would take you to slow simmer this superfood yourself. Sure you can make some bone broth yourself if you have easy access to pastured beef bones, and if you have the time on your side of stocking (no pun intended) up on bone broth.

You’re really paying for convenience and quality with this bone broth and you’ll need to take that into consideration to see if this fits in your budget for your family. Personally I see this as a valuable product to keep in my pantry as backup/emergency purposes. Why? Because I don’t always have bone broth in my freezer and because this is the only shelf stable grass fed bone broth out there. I think this is a great product and like I said it came at the perfect time for me and my family and I imagine it may do the same for you and your family as we go into the flu season.

The guys from Bone Broths Co. are great and offer a discount when you sign up for their newsletter and they ship out same day when you order, so I suggest you check that out.

Taste

Nothing like a warm mug of slow simmered beef bones. It’s a flavor and smell that tells my brain that I’m consuming something that’s good for me. As cheesy as that sounds it’s true. It’s kinda like when you drink kombucha you know there’s all these little Navy Seal like bacteria heading to your gut to wage war on everything that shouldn’t be in my gut… Or am I the only one who has that picture when drinking kombucha or bone broth? Ok maybe it’s just me. Nevertheless Bone Broths Co. hit the nail on the head with the taste of this. The taste of this bone broth tastes almost exactly like the batches I’ve made following the recipe in The Ancestral Table.

If you made bone broth yourself you might jack up the taste if you leave something out, but rest assured there’s no jacked up taste to this broth. You can enjoy it just like I did and pour it right in a mug, warm it up and sip away!

Conclusion

I’m super thankful for the wonderful people at Bone Broths Co. for making this product and for getting it over to me when I needed it most. Definitely a valuable product in my home and I plan to line my pantry with a few just to have on hand. I suggest you do the same because you never know when your kids are going to try to pass on their mad cow bubonic plague flu to you.