Why I make meat stock, not bone broth (and how)

Meat and bone, a few hours on the stove, no vinegar — gentler than bone broth, rich in glycine, and done the same day.

Where I'm from, we always have a soup for lunch — even in summer. And soup starts with meat stock. That's still what I make today. Not bone broth. People assume they're the same thing. They're not, and the difference matters.

Meat stock, not bone broth

Bone broth is made from bare bones, boiled for 24 to 48 hours, usually with vinegar added to pull minerals out. Meat stock is made from meat on the bone — a whole chicken, or a proper piece of beef — and it's done the same day.

The gelatine doesn't need two days. It comes from the skin, joints and connective tissue, and gentle heat releases it within a few hours. A good meat stock still sets like jelly in the fridge.

The difference isn't just time — it's chemistry. The longer bones cook, the more the proteins break down into their free forms. Two of these matter for how you feel. The first is free glutamate: bound up in protein it's harmless, but a 48-hour simmer releases a lot of it in free form, and free glutamate is stimulating to the nervous system. A body that's already running on stress hormones doesn't need more stimulation. The second is histamine, which builds steadily the longer the pot simmers and the longer the broth sits. Many depleted women are already carrying a high histamine load — if a food leaves you flushed, headachy, itchy or oddly wired, that's often the reason.

A meat stock, cooked in hours rather than days, keeps both of these low. You get the gelatine, the collagen and the amino acids without the compounds that can agitate a sensitive system. That's why it's the version traditionally used when a gut needs calming rather than challenging — the strength of a long-boiled broth is something to work up to, not start with.

And you get a meal out of it. The meat has cooked slowly in the stock, so nothing is wasted.

How I make it

Chicken: a whole pasture-raised chicken in a large pot, covered with cold water. Bring it slowly to a simmer and skim what rises. Add an onion, a carrot, some celery, a few peppercorns and good salt. Lid on, heat right down — barely a bubble — for up to 5 hours.

Beef: about 1kg of brisket on the bone, or with a marrow bone alongside, made the same way, for up to 7 hours. Beef needs longer to give everything it has.

No vinegar. Vinegar belongs to long-boiled bone broth, where it's used to strip minerals from bare bones over days. With meat, skin and joints in the pot, the nourishment is gelatine, collagen and amino acids — time and gentle heat draw those out on their own.

Strain it, and once cold it should wobble — that's the gelatine. The meat goes into soup or becomes lunch the next day.

Glycine — why this food matters

Gelatine is cooked collagen, and roughly a third of collagen is one amino acid: glycine. It's the most abundant amino acid in meat stock, and one of the hardest to get from modern eating, because it sits in the parts of the animal we stopped eating — skin, joints, connective tissue.

Glycine helps maintain the gut lining. The body also uses it to build collagen for skin and joints, and to make glutathione, its own master antioxidant. It plays a role in calm and sleep too — many women tell me a warm cup in the evening settles them.

You can't shortcut this with a powder. A depleted body does best with food it recognises.

Where to begin

One pot at the weekend. A warm cup in the morning, and the rest becomes the base of the week's soups and stews, or the liquid you cook rice and vegetables in. Week by week, it gives your body raw materials back.

If your bloods say you're fine and you still feel flat, start here.