Lamb Bone Broth

It took me a while to work out a way of cooking bone broth that didn’t make my daughter and I feel ill, not to mention one that actually tasted nice.  When I say a while, I mean a whiiiiiile.  I’m talking a whole year of trying different cooking times, different spices, different animal bones... you get the picture. 
I wanted it to taste nice enough to drink straight out of a mug without having to add a bunch of things to make it palatable.
Cue lamb broth using coconut vinegar! This is my favourite broth.  Chicken bones are good too but this is my firm favourite!
This recipe is actually very flexible.  You will see that I haven’t added many specific quantaties, that’s because it all depends on what you have in your fridge.  It’s almost as much about using up leftovers and scraps as making something beautifully healthful!

Recipe
A heap of organic lamb bones (I tend to use about 500g, but it is HUGELY variable)**
1 onion roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
Any leftover veggies that need using up in the bottom of your fridge… think carrot tops, celery, kale stalks, woody asparagus and broccoli stalks.  Don’t bother peeling or cutting off odds and ends, just give your veggies a good scrub and roughly chop them up.
1 teaspoon of sea salt
1 teaspoon of whole peppercorns
A handful of any fresh herbs you have growing in your garden or in your fridge (a word of warning, fresh rosemary becomes VERY strong when cooked for a long period of time, if using, go easy!)
1-2 tbsp coconut vinegar... feel free to use apple cider vinegar if that works for you.  (If using coconut vinegar you want it to be made from naturally fermented coconut sap/nectar bottled with the ‘mother’)

**NOTE: You should be able to gets lamb bones either free or very cheaply from your local butcher.  Better still if you’ve just had lamb chops or a lamb roast for dinner use all leftover bones, fat and gristle. Don’t worry, even though it feels weirdly unnatural, everyone’s mouth germs will be killed in the cooking process!

Method
Pop everything into your slow cooker, pour in enough water to cover your bones and cook on low for 12-24 hours.
Strain through a sieve and discard all leftovers.  (Keep in mind that you can actually re-use the bones a couple of times.  This is a French practice called “remouillage”.  How very fancy…and frugal!)
I like to store my broth in glass jars, cool completely, and freeze for use as needed.

This broth will form a layer of fat over the top.  You can leave it and just stir it back into your broth upon re-heating, scrape it off and discard it, or save it for frying in place of oil.

Lots of people get very obsessed about their broths forming a gel.  I don’t get too worried about it anymore.  Whether it gels or not has got a lot to do with cooking times and whether there was much connective tissue in the bones you were using.  The broth has different healing properties depending on cook time, if it doesn’t gel it’s not necessarily less nutritious, it just has different health properties to a broth that does set to a gel.