Venison Bone Broth

Most broth simmers for twelve to twenty-four hours. Ours stays in the pot for four days.

Bone is mostly collagen. Four days of gentle heat is what it takes to break that collagen down and draw it into the water as gelatin. You can see the result without being told: cool a tub and it sets to a jelly. Warm it and it turns back to liquid. Nothing else in the jar makes that happen, so it is the most honest measure of what the bones gave up.

Venison bones, mountain water, white vinegar, Oryx salt and stinging nettle. That is the whole list. No stock cubes, no yeast extract, nothing added to make it look richer, taste stronger or keep longer than it should.

The vinegar is the old kitchen trick. A little acid in the water helps draw the minerals out of the bone, and it leaves no sharpness in the finished broth, only a little more of what the bones hold.

The venison comes from game raised on open land around Hogsback, not from a feedlot, and the land is not sprayed. The water comes off the mountain. The Oryx salt is unrefined. The nettle grows here without being asked, and we harvest, dry and add it ourselves.

What you pour out of the tub is what came off the bones.

Game farms around Hogsback. We take bones from farms within reach of us, from animals raised on the mountain and not trucked in from somewhere else. Bones are the part of the animal most likely to be thrown away, and they are the part that makes the best food.

From hunters who live here. Local hunters bring bones in when they have them. It means our supply is seasonal and small, and it means the money stays in the valley.

The whole animal. Bone broth is what a farm does with what a farm has. Using the bones honours the animal twice: once for the meat, once for what most kitchens discard.

Cooked here, in steel. Stainless steel vats, low heat, nothing faster. No pressure cookers, because four days at a gentle simmer draws a different broth from four hours under pressure.

Bone broth is food, not medicine. We sell it because it is nourishing, because it tastes of something, and because it is a good habit to keep. We are not going to tell you it cures anything.

Here is the honest version of the research, in case you have read the headlines. Bone broth does contain collagen, gelatin and the amino acids that come with them, though usually less than a collagen supplement. It does contain minerals, but only a small share of what the bone holds makes it into the water. Glycine, the amino acid studied for sleep, is in there, and you would need several cups to reach the dose used in the trials.

The case for our broth does not rest on a health claim. It rests on four days in the pot, four ingredients, and bones from animals that lived on this mountain.