Chicken feet bone broth is one of the most nutritionally dense foods that we can consume. It’s fantastic for aiding in healing a leaky gut, repairing the collagen in our skin and hair, strengthening the cartilage in our joints, and restoring our bodies’ natural electrolyte balance, just to name a few. It’s also fantastic for balancing hormones and fertility. From pre-conception through postpartum, bone broth has the complete amino acid and mineral profile that our body needs to function at a high level. It is an all-around superfood that should be a staple in everyone’s diet, men and women alike!
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of bone broth check out my blog, where I break down “7 Health Benefits Of Bone Broth“.
Is Chicken Feet Bone Broth Better Than Other Bone Broth?
All homemade bone broth is great for the body; however, using chicken feet or any knuckled bones is a great way to add additional gelatin to your bone broth recipe. Using knuckled bones, such as chicken feet, is how you are going to achieve “jello-like” bone broth. Gelatin is a great source of collagen and is really helpful for not only building up the skin, hair, nails, and joints but also for healing and protecting the mucosal lining in the intestines. Gelatin contains glutamic acid, which is an amino acid used to protect the intestinal wall and prevent leaky gut syndrome, a condition where your gut is not able to properly digest food.
5 Benefits Of Bone Broth:
- Nutrient Dense: Bone broth is packed with essential vitamins and minerals. The vitamin and mineral density varies with the type of bones used; however, vitamins A and K2 and minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, selenium, zinc, boron, and phosphorus are all prevalent in a warm bowl of bone broth. These are all essential to keeping a balanced electrolyte profile as well as a strong immunity and gut lining.
- Healing Compounds: Collagen, proline, glutamine, glycine, and gelatin are all essential amino acids that are crucial for soothing, healing, sealing, and repairing the intestinal walls and gut lining. They are easily absorbed into the gut and are super helpful for everyone, but especially if you suffer from food sensitivities, allergies, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation. They are also really helpful for any type of autoimmune disease. Many autoimmune diseases stem from the gut, so if you can heal the gut, you can help heal the autoimmune condition.
- Improves Digestion: Bone broth lowers inflammation in the gut by building up the intestinal wall and balancing the amino acids and vitamin and mineral profiles in the body. When the intestinal wall is healed, digestion naturally improves.
- Liver Detox: Glycine, an amino acid found in bone broth, is essential to the liver to break down toxins. The liver is responsible for filtering all of the body’s blood. As you can imagine, that’s a pretty big job! Therefore, making sure that you are supporting your liver through proper nutrition is important to not only liver function but overall immune function. Healthy blood equals a healthy body!
- Heals and Supports Skin, Joints, Hair, and Nails: Gelatin is packed with collagen, a protein that composes skin, cartilage, hair, and nails. When you continually replenish your collagen supplies this helps with sun damage, joint repair and maintenance, and any type of skin condition such as eczema, psoriasis, acne, rosacea, etc. Whenever you are trying to heal a skin condition, you should first look at healing the gut. The skin is merely a reflection of your insides.
How To Make Gelatinous Bone Broth:
When it comes to making a super gelatinous bone broth, there are two main things to keep in mind:
- Use Knuckled Bones: Using bones with lots of knuckles or nails is super helpful when it comes to achieving a gelatinous broth. The reason is that the knuckles have a lot of cartilage in them. When cartilage is melted down, it turns into gelatin. This is what is going to give you a “jello-like” consistency in your bone broth. It is also going to give you a collagen-dense broth, as collagen is derived from gelatin. Using bones like chicken feet, chicken necks, and spines are all great options. If you are using beef bones, I recommend going to your local butcher or a local farm online and purchasing knuckle bones or marrow bones.
- Cook Down Into a Concentrate: Making sure that you are cooking down the liquid so that it becomes a concentrate is really important. I typically like to cook my broth down so that it is about half the amount of liquid that I started with. This takes time, but will be well worth the time. This is where you will get the most bang for your buck when it comes to nutritional benefits.
Where Can I Buy Chicken Feet?
You can often find chicken feet in your local Whole Foods or butcher shop. If you cannot find them there, you can always purchase chicken feet and soup bones online through local ranches and farms. That’s what I oftentimes will do.
Note: This blog post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Ingredients:
- Chicken Feet/Soup Bones
- Sweet Onion
- Carrots
- Celery
- Ginger
- Fennel Bulb
- Garlic
- Bay Leaves
- Sage Leaves
- Rosemary
- Thyme
- Apple Cider Vinegar
- Salt
- Black Pepper
- Filtered Water
Materials Used:
How to Make Chicken Feet Bone Broth:
Begin by rinsing and drying off your chicken feet and soup bones. I like to use chicken feet and chicken spines (neck and back) as they tend to have more cartilage and in turn gelatin. You can always use chicken legs or wings though if you can’t find chicken feet and necks.
Add your bones to a large stock pot and roughly chop up carrots, celery, fennel, garlic, onion, and a little bit of ginger.
Tie together your favorite herbs. I like using sage, lemon thyme, oregano, bay leaves, and rosemary. You can use whatever herbs you like though.
Add everything into the large stock pot and salt and pepper.
Cover the bones, veggies, and herbs with filtered water and add 2 Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar.
Place the lid ajar on the stock pot and bring the water to a simmer. You want the water to cook down for about 2-2.5 hours.
After 2-2.5 hours the water should have evaporated by about half. When this happens, add more water. Fill the water to the top of the stock pot again.
Cook for an additional 4-5 hours until the liquid cooks down to about half the original water line. This will leave you with a concentrated bone broth.
To strain the bone broth, pour the broth into a fine sieve lined with cheesecloth and into a glass jar. Do not use plastic.
Wait for the bone broth to cool before sealing it and placing it in the refrigerator.
FAQ:
- Can I re-use my bones for bone broth? Yes, you can re-use the bones for a second batch of bone broth. I recommend not using them more than twice though. If you are to re-use them, I recommend using them on the same day or freezing them until you are ready to use them again.
- Can I use chicken legs or wings instead of chicken feet? Definitely! I would recommend adding more bones if you want a super gelatinous bone broth, but you can definitely use chicken legs or wings in order to make bone broth.
- Can I use my Instant Pot to make bone broth? Yes! I have never personally done it this way, as I do not own an Instant Pot; however, you can definitely use an Instant Pot instead.
- Can I use a slow cooker? 100%! The slow cooker does take a little bit longer to make bone broth in but can be great for if you are on the run all day and want some bone broth to come home to. Check out my blog here if you would like to learn how to make bone broth in the slow cooker.
- Can I freeze bone broth? You can freeze bone broth. I recommend freezing it in either Ziplock bags or glass jars.
To store in Ziplock bags, make sure that the bone broth is completely cooled before transferring it into the bag.
To store in glass jars, fill up the jar 3/4 of the way full. You want to leave room for the broth to expand when freezing. If you fill up the jar all the way to the top, you run the risk of the jar breaking once frozen. Also, make sure before sealing the jar with a lid, that the bone broth is completely cooled.
My Favorite Ways To Use Bone Broth:
I use bone broth in a bunch of different recipes. Some of my favorite ways to use it are:
- Soups: Bone broth is a perfect way to add additional nutrients to your soups like chicken noodle and tomato soup.
- Rice: I love cooking my rice in bone broth, especially for chicken fried rice. It not only adds lots of additional nutrients but also a ton of flavor that would not otherwise be there.
- Sauces: I add bone broth to a ton of my sauces. From spaghetti bolognese to pot roast, I add bone broth to most of my sauces. It adds rich flavor and tons of nutrients to your dish.
If you try this recipe and love it, I would love it if you would consider coming back to the site to give it a 5-star rating and tag me on Instagram or Facebook! Thanks so much 🙂
Chicken Feet Bone Broth Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 lb. chicken feet
- 1 lb. chicken soup bones (necks and backs)
- 2 medium carrots
- 2 celery stalks
- 1 fennel bulb
- 1 sweet or yellow onion
- 6 garlic cloves
- 2 tsp. fresh ginger
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 bunch fresh sage
- 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
- 1 bunch lemon thyme
- 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
- 10 cups filtered water
- 2 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. black pepper
Instructions
- Rinse off the chicken feet and soup bones and add them into a large stock pot.
- Roughly chop up carrots, celery, fennel, garlic, onion, and ginger.
- Tie together with kitchen twine sage, lemon thyme, oregano, and rosemary.
- Add everything into the large stock pot. Add salt, pepper, and bay leaves.
- Add apple cider vinegar and water to the stock pot.
- Cover the bones, veggies, and herbs with filtered water and add 2 Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar.
- Place the lid ajar on the stock pot and bring the water to a simmer. You want the water cook down for about 2-2.5 hours.
- After 2-2.5 hours the water should have evaporated by about half. When this happens, add more water. Fill water to the top of the stock pot again.
- Cook for additional 4-5 hours until the liquid cooks down to about half the original water line. This will leave you with a concentrated bone broth.
- To strain the bone broth, pour the broth into a fine sieve lined with cheese cloth and into a glass jar. Do not use plastic.
- Wait for the bone broth to cool before sealing it and placing in the refrigerator.
Notes
Tips for Making Gelatinous Bone Broth:
When it comes to making a super gelatinous bone broth, there are two main things to keep in mind:- Use Knuckled Bones: Using bones with lots of knuckles or nails is super helpful when it comes achieving a gelatinous broth. The reason being, is that the knuckles have a lot of cartilage in them. When cartilage is melted down, it turns into gelatin. This is what is going to give you a “jello-like” consistency in your bone broth. It is also going to give you a collagen dense broth, as collagen is derived from gelatin. Using bones like chicken feet, chicken necks and spines are all great options. If you are using beef bones, I recommend going to your local butcher or a local farm online and purchasing knuckle bones or marrow bones.
- Cook Down Into a Concentrate: Making sure that you are cooking down the liquid so that it becomes a concentrate is really important. I typically like to cook my broth down so that it is about half the amount of liquid that I started with. This takes time; but will be well worth the time. This is where you will get the most bang for your buck when it comes to nutritional benefits.
