Bountiful Broth Bone Broth

In 2012, my husband and I decided to abandon the stress of Sydney living and give ourselves and our two boys (Paddy & Johnny) a better life in Bowral, in New South Wales’ beautiful Southern Highlands.

This change in lifestyle coincided with some major changes in our diet. While we love eating out, hosting dinner parties and enjoying the good life, we also want to be as healthy as we can be most of the time. So when not blowing our diets with pizza or margaritas, we had been eating paleo for a number of years, with significant health benefits. My husband lost 30 kilos and I finally shed most of the weight gained during (and after) pregnancy. The countless cuppas with biscuits with visitors coming to see the baby - were as much to blame as the general lethargy and laziness that gripped me during pregnancy.

However, I have always had a strong interest in food. I love cooking – especially making new things and then adapting my own version of recipes. I also love eating (of course) and learning about nutrition. The move to Bowral, onset of asthma in my youngest child and move away from my career in financial PR, meant that I now had more time and motivation to think about what food we ate. It wasn’t long before I discovered the health benefits of bone broth and started making batches every week.

The benefits of the broth have been spoken about by Pete Evans, Sarah Wilson and countless other wellness warrior types (you can find articles with a simple google search).

For me the benefit were obvious – better skin, hair, no tennis elbow (earned via lifting children from cots rather than from actual tennis) and delicious dishes - but there were some drawbacks. Due to it’s distinctive cooking aroma (‘what’s that smelly smell’ – Johnny would yell), my husband (with the support of ungrateful children), banished our slow cooker to the garage. My friends also got somewhat sick of me lecturing them about bone broth every time they or their kids showed any sign of sickness. Colds, gout, asthma, PMT? Drink bone broth! Nonethless, I persisted and it wasn’t long before others were asking me for lessons on how to make it. My husband would request it for dinner and the kids would eat it (unwittingly of course) in almost every meal.

I knew it was time to get serious when I convinced a girlfriend living in New York – who had never cooked anything more complex than toast – to buy a pressure cooker and start bone brothing-up. I think she might have made one batch before discovering it was much easier to buy it from Brodo, a place that sells it like coffee…. This is a surprisingly common issue. I found that although everyone wants the health benefits, few lack the time and commitment required to cook a 48-hour batch of broth. Not to mention the mess, preparation, straining, reducing and storing – that cooking this life-giving broth requires.

Buying it definitely seems like the easiest option for many. But sadly in the Highlands we don’t have bone broth stands on every corner. In fact, I found that you really can’t buy it anywhere. So I decided to make it easy for everyone and start making it here in Bowral. And so was born Bountiful Broth.

The full list of ingredients includes:

Grass fed beef and/or chicken bones
Filtered water
Fresh vegetables, spices and herbs
Himalayan salt

Flavours come in organic chicken, Asian masterstock and traditional. Conveniently packaged, Bountiful Broth is concentrated (5:1) to make it easily incorporated into soups, stews, sauces, stir it through the kids pasta, throw a couple of cubes into a smoothie or just with hot water as a delicious drink. Easy, nutritious and no ‘smelly smell’ to worry about.