Want to know how to make gelatinous, perfect bone broth in your pressure cooker every time? So did I! So, I turned to Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo. It was her post on making homemade bone broth in her pressure cooker that cemented my desire to solve the riddle of whether or not pressure cooking is healthy once and for all! Michelle has generously offered to divulge her broth-making secrets with you. She shares how to make her Pressure Cooker Bone Broth below. Thanks, Michelle!
There’s nothing I like more than a nice steaming mug of bone broth to get me through the cold winter months. It warms me from the inside out and it’s so good for you: check out why in these great posts by Mark’s Daily Apple and Balanced Bites.
I have a recipe for simmering bone broth in the slow cooker and my mom routinely makes a pot on the stove but sometimes I just want a bowl RIGHT NOW. If you haven’t guessed, patience ain’t one of my strong suits.
Enter the pressure cooker.
According to foodie scientist, Harold McGee:
A pressure cooker is a special pot that seals tightly and traps hot steam to build the pressure and temperature.
In other words, stocks and stews that normally take hours to cook are finished in just 1/3 the time in a pressure cooker. I don’t use my pressure cooker for everything but I do love stewing braised veggies and meaty bone broths in it. Why? Because these dishes just turn out better and faster. It’s quite remarkable how pressure cooking can transform meaty, collagen-filled cuts like oxtail and cross shanks into fork tender cuts in less than an hour.
(Although the new generation of pressure cookers are safer than the old ones, please read your instruction manual carefully and check out these helpful tips from Mr. McGee. You do need to babysit the pot and you can’t wing it.)
I’ve got great pressure cooker recipes for Welsh Beef Stew and Phở that I share in my iPad cooking app, but here’s a simple recipe for a flavorful bone broth that’ll be ready in less than an hour. And, yes, it does gel in the fridge. Just throw in a few chicken feet or joint bones and your broth will be all jiggly.
Pressure Cooker Bone Broth Recipe
(This recipe is cross-posted at Nom Nom Paleo.)
Equipment
- Pressure Cooker (where to buy pressure cookers)
The Players
- 2 medium leeks, cleaned and cut in half crosswise
- 1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into three pieces
- 2.5 pounds of assorted bones (I use a mixture of chicken and pork bones from the freezer or cross shanks and oxtails)
- 8 cups of water (enough to cover the bones but not more than 2/3rd the capacity of the pressure cooker)
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 2 tablespoons of Red Boat fish sauce (where to buy Red Boat fish sauce)
The How-To
Dump the veggies in the pressure cooker (make sure it’s at least 6-quarts).
Toss in your bones (frozen is fine), cover with water (make sure you don’t fill more than 2/3rds capacity!), add vinegar, and fish sauce.
Lock on the lid and turn the dial to high pressure. Place the pot on a burner set on high heat. Once the indicator pops up showing that the contents of the pot have reached high pressure, immediately decrease the temperature to the lowest possible setting to maintain high pressure (low is normally adequate).
Set the timer for 30 minutes (I let it go for 50 minutes if I’m cooking meaty shanks or oxtails).
When the timer dings, turn off the burner and remove the pot from the heat. Let the pressure release naturally (10-15 minutes).
Remove the lid, skim of the scum (if you desire), and strain the broth.
I don’t parboil the bones to decrease the scum because I’m lazy. Plus, there really isn’t that much left after you strain it.
This technique is faster and more flavorful than other methods. Really.
For more delicious recipes similar to this one (grain-free and dairy-free), I highly recommend the Paleo Eats Cookbook.
Written by a Cordon Bleu trained chef, this book is packed with hundreds of recipes to get you started on your journey to ancestral eating. Recipes are grain-free, dairy-free, soy-free, sugar-free, and use healthy fats. They’re also super easy to follow and can be prepared in 30 minutes or less!
At the moment, the printed version of this cookbook is 100% free to Food Renegade readers. You just cover shipping & handling.
Meet Michelle Tam!
I am super-excited to have Michelle guest post here at Food Renegade!
Michelle is the sardonic foodie and working mom behind Nom Nom Paleo, a popular and award-winning food blog devoted to Paleo food porn and recipes galore.
Covering everything from kitchen shortcuts to tips on dining out, the site demonstrates with vivid food photography that Paleo eating is possible for anyone — even those with busy schedules and demanding palates. Michelle is passionate about helping readers implement and sustain an ancestral dietary approach; on a daily basis, she writes about how home cooks can spend less time in the kitchen and still end up with nutritious, flavor-packed meals for the entire family.
Michelle has a degree in Nutrition & Food Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of California at San Francisco. Although Michelle’s training emphasized conventional approaches to nutrition and health, she discovered the science and benefits of Paleo eating two years ago, finding that it was the only approach that helped to whittle down her midsection and fuel her with enough energy to wrangle two small boys, hold down a full-time night shift hospital job, cook for a houseful of hungry cavepeople, lift heavy stuff at her CrossFit box, and maintain a daily blog.
In the Spring of 2012, Michelle released the Nom Nom Paleo interactive cookbook for the iPad®, a visual feast packed with brand new recipes, as well as updated versions of classic Nom Nom Paleo dishes. Within the first 24 hours of its release in April 2012, it was featured as one of the top three paid Lifestyle apps in the App Store. It continues to be one of the Top 10 bestselling paid Food & Drink apps in the App Store.
Michelle’s blog was recently recognized by the editors and readers of Saveur Magazine as the Best Special Diets Blog of 2012. She also won Apartment Therapy and thekitchn.com’s 2012 Homies Award for Best Food Photography on a Blog.
So, if you haven’t checked out Nom Nom Paleo yet, what are you waiting for? Go do it now!
What if you don’t have bones on hand or a pressure cooker?
What if you still want all the benefits of homemade bone broth, but you don’t have a time-saving pressure cooker or a pile of bones on hand?
Good news! You can now buy real bone broth online. It’s traditionally-prepared from pastured animals and ships frozen.
(where to buy real bone broth online)
If buying any pre-made broth isn’t up your alley, then I highly suggest you invest in a pressure cooker! This is the one I got.
NO EXCUSES, FOLKS. Get ‘er done!
(where to buy pressure cookers)
(photos by Nom Nom Paleo)
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Aye, bone soups are so good and good for us. We eat a lot of bone soups. And then the bones go to our pack of livestock working dogs who devour them. Thrice eaten.
We often can the broth and gelatin. Another good source of gelatin is from making lard from back fat.
I love saying “thrice eaten.”
I don’t have dogs, but my bones get cooked until they dissolve into mush. At that point, I put them in the garden. So, maybe I can consider that feeding the soil and say my bones are thrice eaten as well?
What does the fish sauce do for the recipe?
The fish sauce adds a complex, salty undertone to the flavor of the broth.
If you don’t have any on hand, you can omit it and substitute salt to taste.
Hi Jerian! Fish sauce adds that elusive fifth taste, umami, to the broth, deepening the flavor profile and elevating it beyond just saltiness. One of the reasons a bowl of pho tastes so good is because the “salt” in the recipe is typically fish sauce.
So that time really gets all the goodness out of them? What happens is you run them through again?
Yep.
As with any bone broth, you could probably run them through the gamut once or twice more before they completely dissolve (at which point you’d probably toss them in your garden or compost if you didn’t have dogs to feed).
Do you think the high heat of the pressure cooker is a concern for the fish sauce? Would you get the same effect adding the fish sauce after the pressure cooking?
I’m not concerned about the fish sauce being added during the cooking process. It is not that heat-sensitive. (It has already been pasteurized, so it’s not like it’s raw and you have to fear for probiotic loss.)
I think you could add it after cooking the broth, but I think the flavor will be less subtle and won’t infuse the broth as well after the fact.
I haven’t ever tried it. I will ask Michelle and see if she’s tried it the other way!
I’m not concerned about the high heat affecting the fish sauce, either. I always add it before I cook the broth because I want the flavor to infuse the broth without overpowering it. If my broth needs more salt when it’s finished, I season to taste with some celtic salt.
I’ve had some chicken feet in my freezer and have never worked up the nerve to use them in broth. I recall reading once that you had to clean them thoroughly and trim the nails. Is that always the case? These look pretty clean to me.
I *never* clean my chicken feet or trim the toe nails!
The toe nails often fall off when the broth is being made, but you just strain them out in the end with the rest of the bones, skin, and cartilage.
And I can’t see being concerned about germs because you’re *cooking* them, so any bad germs will die.
I just dump the chicken feet in the pot because the ones I get from the butcher are clean enough for me!
I never clean mine either. They look clean enough when I dump them into the pot.
Just want to mention that after the first round of making my broth in the pressure cooker, I take out the broth and then add more filtered water and give the bones a second go-round. I get twice as much yummy gelled broth out of it! Today I’m making it with pork neck bones and a sheep foot.
Thanks to the 2 of you, I’ve now gotten a new pressure cooker. (Well, 2, in fact, I settled on the Fagor Duo.) I’ve cooked my first 2 batches of broth and meat. I am THRILLED to have my cooking done in 2 hours,low pressure, resulting in beautiful thick gel. This is a great advance in GAPS cooking. Renegades Rule! thanks.
every time i have meat or bone broth/ stock, i feel drugged with an intense fatigue and have to go sleep for four hours. it’s horrible! i’m wondering if this pressure cooker broth would be different? i don’t know if it’s the glutamates or histamines or what it is, but i’d really love to have broth! any opinion?
Hi churyl!
That’s so strange! And that happens with all meat products? What about eggs? I have kind of the opposite problem, because I seem to tolerate meat just fine but any kind of carbohydrate gives me digestive distress. Have you ever had your stomach acid levels checked, or tried supplementing with HCl? That’s really the only thing I can think of; I don’t know much about glutamates or histamines. I hope you can figure out what’s going on!
no, no…just with broth. not meat itself or eggs. thank god!
Churyl – Have you found a way around this? I am having the same problem.
Hope that you see this and this helps you! It is probably the amines in the broth, caused by long cooking. Amines are formed when cooking meat and in this case broth, it is the browning of the meat and can cause symptoms in people who are sensitive. You may want to look up the RPAH-diet or similar elimination diet, there is a book and website about Fed-up, also called FailSafe diet, which looks at eliminating naturally-occurring chemicals in foods (Glutamats, Amines and Salicylates). I have bought a pressure cooker for this reason alone, as I also love making broth but the amines caused by the long cooking time, is an issue for me. Hope this is helpful.
If you are making broth using the pressure cooker, or if you are roasting the bones beforehand, you may be creating free glutamates that are making you sleepy. It’s one of my concerns about making the bone broth with a pressure cooker, that the high heat could create free glutamates, but it’s just a suspicion and i”ve never seen this confirmed. If you think you might be sensitive to free glutamates, it would be a great trial to see if you have the same reaction to broth make from slow-cooking and pressure cooking. If you do not react to slow cooked broth, this could be an indication that pressure cooking creates free glutatmates. I’d love to hear about your n=1 if you do the experiment, as I’m not sensitive enough to free glutamates to be able to tell if my food has them or not, however, I still wish to avoid them, and to have my clients avoid them. Here’s an interesting interview on free glutamates, that touches on bone broth. It seems that both long cooking, high heat, and adding an acid are all problems. I’m not entirely sure which method would create the most free glutamates.
https://missionheirloom.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/why-have-you-heard-us-say-free-glutamate-and-no-vinegar/
This is fascinating! I always make bone broth in my slow cooker, and it simmers for two days and smells up the whole house. This sounds so much easier! I’ve always been wary of pressure cookers, because they seem so…’unnatural,’ I guess, but maybe I’ll have to reconsider. And I’ve never thought of adding fish sauce! Sounds yummy though. Does all fish sauce have sugar? The kind I bought does, and I’m wondering if that’s always the case. Thanks!
Sounds like a wonderful bone broth recipe! Kristen, I was wondering if you (or anyone else reading this) have come across any pressure cooker cookbooks that you would recommend. Specifically, did you have to adjust cooking times for soaked grains and beans when referring to recipes that don’t include soaking as part of the recipe, or did you happen to find ones that do suggest soaking?
Lot’s of recipes and pressure cooker info here: http://missvickie.com/
Who sells the bone broth online? I can’t find any mention of bone broth on the resources page. Thanks!
Hi Robin – US Wellness Meats sells it. http://www.grasslandbeef.com/Detail.bok?no=822
I just made it in my mom’s Presto pressure cooker from the 90s and it turned out GREAT! I didn’t have leeks but I subbed one medium onion cut in quarters with the skin on and added two ribs of coarsely chopped celery. Can’t wait to try beef stock using the pressure cooker!
I’ve got it going now (figured out what the problem was with my pressure cooker btw) and am so excited that I won’t have to deal with watching a pot for hours at a time.
When I make bone broth I use only the bones with no veggies (If I put onions in then my dog can’t have the bones) and then I freeze it.
I also put the bones through with a little less water two more times and by then they’re crumbly. They still produce gelatin even after two go-arounds!
I’ve always roasted my soup bones in the oven prior to making bone broth. Is there any reason against roasting beforehand when using a pressure cooker for the broth?
We use everything. Stock is a staple at our house and the pressure cooker is used all the time. Don’t overlook fish stock and yes use the heads. You can often find the head and bones at the fish markets.
So glad you mentioned fish bones! How long do you do fish heads and bones for? I have some wild caught salmon, sea bass, and halibut bones/heads and am curious, but didn’t see anything on timing, and if other ingredients to add would be different, and can you do them for 3 rounds as well for gelatinous broth?
THANK YOU!
I was wondering if pressure cooked foods could be pressure canned. I thought that I recalled reading somewhere briefly that they could not be, but I haven’t been able to find anything comprehensive on the mattter.
Hi there. I was just wondering if you knew what pressure this might be cooked at? My pressure canner has a gauge on it. Thank you! Oh, just to verify, this can be canned correct? TIA!
I just made broth with my pressure cooker for the first time yesterday. It didn’t gel very well, but I think that’s because I had cooked the crap out of the chicken for a Sunday dinner. (Not a very good cook….) but! I was delighted to see that I could just dump chicken feet in without trimming them first. They totally creep me out, but I really want to use them! I did run the bones through twice and ended up with almost a gallon of broth! I’m so happy with this method. I also can’t wait to add fish sauce. I think it will give it that missing flavor oomph!
So please let me know with cooking Broth in Pressure cooker once it is finished then and you take the lid of and there is scum sitting on top. Do you have to ladle the scum off. Is it not healthy to leave the scum in the broth. ?????
The scum is a part Of The good food , your body will take care of that , it also has flavor so I leave it in , been eating it since I can remember since 1947 when I was six eating pigs feet with gramps
I’ll remember to save my leftover bones once I purchase a pressure cooker. Do you know any websites like http://www.cookwithpressure.com/ where I can find more reviews?
Thanks so much for the pressure cooking and the broth recipes. I was given a bag of pork backbone, and really didn’t know what to do with the bones. I am pressuring them now with the intentions of getting them soft enough for my six dogs. After reading, I guess I will have to try the broth. I had no idea how much I need it. I also have some jelly left over from rendering lard..reckon the dogs won’t get that either..thanks again for the info.
I love synchronized thoughts amoung humans..less than an hour ago I’m vacuuming, happy over my crock pot gelled beef broth, thinking I wanted to share this with my brother cause is soup is great but he can’t get his broth to gel…but he has a pressure cooker. I should find rood renegade pressure cooker broth article.you save me the time.
Michaela, great minds think a like!
I really need to get one of these. 🙂
I just made broth for the first time and had a large amount with lunch (2-3 cups), and I feel sooo sleepy and spacey. Is that a detox reaction or a response to the glycine?
For those that are mentioning a “symptom” of being very tired and being able to just go to bed after…I think this is a WONDERFUL thing! That (most likely) means you have made a fantastic broth that is now rich in the many minerals from those bones! Think about it. Calcium, magnesium…both are WONDERFUL to help you get some shut eye! keep drinking it, but maybe save most of the drinking for about an hour prior to bedtime! 🙂 Enjoy! And sweet dreams!
Love this site. Got an All American pressure cooker/canner 921 and love it. Make bone broth from our cattle bones, poultry, any seafood bones and use it anytime I need to add liquid for cooking. Use the dissolved bones in the garden. So much fun and no waste.
I am wondering whether someone can tell me whether the short amount of time that the bones are processed using a pressure cooker are sufficient to extract all of the goodness (minerals, etc.) from the bones. I am not sure that the degree of gelatin produced is an indicator of that. In the little bit of reading that I have done people describe how the bones will crumble under had pressure as a result of the vinegar doing it’s thing, and I have had that happen.
I have cooked my broth for up to 48 hours on super low simmer. I could probably skate on it when it cools and the gelatin forms.
Can someone confirm?
The gelatin it not so much from bones , it’s mostly from flesh ,if you want a lot of it throw in a pigsfoot or a couple chicken feet , that’s what I do
Do you find the collagen empties from the bones from the time in the pressure cooker? I maxed out the time(99min) in our 8qt pressure cooker from GoWISE USA and the bone center seemed solid, different when I’ve made the 72hr+ stove top bone broth, where the bones end up completely empty of the collagen. Any ideas? Set the pressure cooker for another max time(99min) to see if it needed more time.
Of course , to equal 72 hours of the crock pot boiling stock , you would have to pressure cook your bones for a out 10 hours , that’s six to as fast as cooking for 72 hrs
Can you please tell me the directions for an Instant Pot pressure cooker?
Yesterday my husband mentions bone broth and today you post about it. Its a sign that I must do this. Lol. Thanks for the recipe.
Hi Kristen,
Thank you for the info! I bought a pressure cooker and followed your directions, but I’m confused about one part- releasing the steam naturally. HOw do I do this? Does that mean I do nothing or id there a setting for that? My pressure cooker just seems to stay locked shut unless I release the steam. I’ve made a few batches and they just aren’t turning out as dark as I’d like. I have a splendid pressure cooker and would be so grateful for any insights you have!
Hello
I am new to this site and bone broths. I have for a long time wanted to make my own and am now starting the adventure. My question is I recently bought a instant pot. I was talking to a friend and she uses it for bone broths and is happy with the smell not soaking into the house. I liked this idea! Then I was talking to my neighbor and she said she thought pressure cooking did not get all the nutrients and benefits of the slow cooking method. She said at the end of the week or days of her broth cooking in her crockpot in the garage, lol, the bones crumble from lack of minerals. She does a diet called gaps. Before I open my instant pot (I will probably keep it anyway) do you know if cooking bone broth in the instant pot is equal to the slow cooking method as in nutritional value the same as slow cooking.
Thanks Diana
That’s not true at all , it gets more out , I have cooked pigs feet in a pot of boiling water and you can cook them all day , and the bones are still hard , put them in a pressure cooker for two hours and you can eat the bones as there soft enough if you want to . So do the math very hard bones or very soft bones , which will have the most of the good stuff let out
Hi, I am using beef bones those big ones called soup bones. I found a place that sells grass fed cattle so the bones should be very rich. Now I have used regular store soup bones before and I had to cook them in a pressure cooker for about 3 1/2 hours before the inner core was cooked and pliable. IS this method good for grass-fed beef bones too? I am using about three of them in a ten quart pressure cooker…..any tips that you can tell me would be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Just wondering the best way to store the bone broth if not used right away . Way considering canning
Hello – I learned/taught myself how to can for just this reason. I filled my freezer to the point I needed another preservation method. I love it and will continue to can it from here on out. I hope this helps!
Do anybody know how much protein there is in a cup (200 ml) of bone broth? My broth always gels, but sometimes i wonder if there is even that much protein in it?
I’ve tried making my own home-made bone broth recipe before but was not that successful. Will definitely try this recipe one of these days. But since I’m always on the go, I drink Au Bon Broth and it is surprisingly as delicious as a home-made.
Be assured you are not getting the total amounts of nutrients needed from pressure cooker bone broth number one it is to hot and destroys the nutrients The broth has to be coon a low heat so as not to damage the nutrients I would rather slow cook it on simmer with a nice small boil for 24hrs and get the most out of it
Thank you for sharing. I hope I can make this once I get the time. But because of my busy schedule, I tried Au Bon Broth. It had lots of positive feed backs so I got curious. And wow, it was right. it was tasty and delicious, plus it’s organic.
I have been using the pressure cooker for bone broth for years, for 3 t0 6 ponds of bones I cook them for 2 to 4 hours , the bigger bones from a 4hour batch get saved to go in another 4 hour batch later , I want to get
Every drop of goodnes out of them before I givthem to the pigs to munch on , I have made soup from a few bones from a two hour cooked batch ,and they were just as tasty as the first run bones,
My broth was delicious but didn’t gel. Could it be related to the vigorous heat?
To make good bone broth, it is recommended to cook the bones (and herbs & spices & veggies) a minumum of 12 hours. 36 to 48 hours is best. let’s say 48 hours is best. So, doing the math, if a pressure cooker cuts cooking time by 1/3, ideally, one should cook bone broth in a pressure cooker for 32 hours. Does that make sense?
Thanks for a reply.
I bought a 16 quart stainless steel stock pot, just to make bone broth. I cooked the bones for 36 hours (on a very low setting on my electric stove) and the broth was excellent. But I would like to reduce the cooking time using a pressure cooker.
Claire
I would love to know the nutrition facts! I’ve been reading a little about bone broth as either a fast or way to lose weight without giving up nutrition.
I wanted to pressure can some bone broth for the winter. Will I lose any of the health benifits from the high heat?
Example, will it still gel when cooled, or will I lose the collagen or gelatin benifits?
Thank you