The Soaked Bean

Seeking Nourishment, Finding Traditions

Dimanche Roast: Pot-au-Feu

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I had my first Suisse pot-au-feu last February while tucked away in the snowy mountains.  This was the traditional version, with beef, bones and vegetables slowly simmered on the stove, carrots and leeks ladled from the broth then salted and slathered with grainy mustard, broth and tender meat sopped up with, not fork, but hunk of crusty bread.  It was just the kind of cheek-flushing, sweater-no-longer-necessary, deeply-warming meal that the (witch) doctor ordered.

Pot-au-feu, or literally pot-over-fire, can be said to be France’s national dish.  Recipes for pot-au-feu are as various as the country’s regions, the families living in those regions.  The main point of pot-au-feu, from my vantage, is to gather honey from a weed: a low-cost (read: tough) cut of meat, some bones, some vegetables, a few sprigs of something green all turned tender, transcendently so, with the aid of heat and time.  The perfect meal for the first truly cold early winter Sunday with an extra-special bonus for une femme comme moi.

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Isn’t it Iron-ic?

I’ve said before that L & I really only eat meat once or twice a week, but this all changes for me during, borrowing my Ethnobotany professor’s line, my moon-time.  (For the more literal friends and/or the men among us, I mean menstruation.  Yep, just said menstruation on the internet.  Girl power!)  Us moon-timing women require 18mg of iron per day, as we’re losing 30-40mg of iron each month during our cycle.  Iron is one of the most difficult minerals to absorb and, although iron absorption increases with increased need, it takes several months to completely replenish iron concentration in the blood so it’s important to keep levels consistent. (Haas, 188)

Iron is actually a micro-mineral, or an essential trace mineral, yet it receives way more attention than some of the big gun macro-minerals like sulfur.  This speaks to two things: the first being just how important iron’s role is in our health.  Iron helps to form hemoglobin.  Hemoglobin carries oxygen molecules throughout our body.  Red blood cells pick up oxygen from our lungs and distribute it to the rest of our tissues, all of which need oxygen to survive.  To put it concisely: If we lack iron, we lack hemoglobin and therefore our tissues lack oxygen.  More concisely: no iron, no energy.  Even more: no Fe = no Fun.  The second thing: although iron exists in many food sources it’s also damn difficult to absorb, and not just for us moon-timers.

Heme vs. Nonheme

Two forms of iron exist: heme and nonheme or, simply, animal and vegetable.  Heme is found only in animal foods–it’s highest in liver and beef–and is the most easily absorbed and utilized form of iron.  Nonheme is found in vegetable sources–like spinach and pumpkin seeds–and, as even my vegetarian-leaning nutrition book admits, is quite poorly absorbed and utilized by our bodies.  (Haas, 188)

To further complicate matters for the herbivores amongst us, the highest sources of nonheme iron–whole grains and dark leafies like spinach and chard–contain certain compounds–phytates and oxalates respectively–that actually bind to iron, inhibiting its uptake and making it even less easy to absorb.  Further still, soy, a common source of protein in many a vegetarian’s diet, has been shown to decrease iron absorption.

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Absorbing it All

You can see now that the main concern with iron is absorption.  The bad news is that there are other factors negatively affecting this besides the aforementioned ones.  These include caffeine and tannic acid in coffee and tea, phosphates in industrial meats and soft drinks, antacids and the less easily remedied low stomach acid and fast gastrointestinal motility.

The good news is there are a few ways to positively affect iron absorption as well.  Vitamin C (sauerkraut with pot-au-feu!), the use of iron cookware (cast-iron dutch-oven for pot-au-feu!), and the combination of heme and nonheme sources (a kale salad with a heap-load of seeds with your pot-au-feu!).

Before I get to the recipe, I’d like to quickly discuss supplementation.  Elements of inorganic iron–such as those used to supplement refined flour–are dubious. In that form, iron can’t be utilized by the body and its build-up in blood and tissues is toxic.  Elevated amounts have been linked to heart disease and cancer. (Fallon, 44)  If supplementing, it’s best to use a supplement derived from whole foods rather than one synthesized in a lab.

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Dimanche Roast: Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

  • 1 pound beef shoulder or brisket
  • 2 pieces of oxtail or marrow bones
  • 2 medium-sized yellow onions
  • handful of carrots
  • handful of turnips
  • 1 leek
  • two handfuls of new potatoes
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • bouquet garni with sage, rosemary and thyme
  • salt and pepper
  • knob ghee

Directions

  1. Heat oven to 200F. Lightly rub your cut of beef with salt and pepper. Heat cast-iron dutch-oven on stove-top and add knob of ghee. Once dutch-oven is hot, sear beef on each side for 1 minute or so. Remove from heat immediately.
  2. Place oxtail or marrow bones in dutch-oven with beef. Cover and place into oven.
  3. While your meat is roasting, prepare your vegetables, roughly chopping them so they are more or less the same size. The turnips and potatoes we used were small, so we just chopped them in half. You can peel your vegetables, or not. Leave garlic whole. Prepare your bouquet garni by tying a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary and sage together with string.
  4. After your meat has roasted on its own for about an hour, add vegetables and bouquet garni to dutch-oven. Keep roasting for another hour-and-a-half, checking on meat to see if it's tender.

Serve with grainy mustard, pickled things and a hunk of crusty bread (to spread your roasted bone-marrow on).

 

References:
Haas, Elson M, 1992, 2006. Staying Health with Nutrition. Berkeley, Celestial Arts.
Fallon, Sally, 1999, 2001. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC. Newstrends Publishing Inc.

No Bones About It: Chicken Bone Broth

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For me, bone broth is it.

While some find wellness through the straw of their smoothie or at the bottom of their green glass of spirulina, I find that I never feel more nourished, more well, in all senses of the word, than when the contents of my bowl, my mug are of the golden, gelatinous, mineral-rich kind.

Now, I’m not talking about the stock found in tetra-packs or the bouillon cube wrapped in foil, I’m talking about broth, in all its simmering glory,  home-rendered from nothing but bones, water, vinegar, heat and time.

When I have a jar of bone broth in my fridge, as funny as it sounds, I feel safe.  Safe because I know that a nourishing meal is within reach with even the most modest contents of fridge. Some carrots, an old celeriac, garlic, onions: voila! a velvety carrot soup.  Some rice and lentils with nary a vegetable to be found:  cooked in bone broth the flavor becomes complex and comforting, as savory as a all-day-stewed tomato-sauce.

There are a few, basic rules for making broth, however they do differ depending on what bones you use.  I made a broth with the bones from last week’s Dimanche Roast, so I’ll be detailing the basics for a chicken broth this week.

Gellin’ like…the Gelatin-Component in Bone Broth

Bone broth is good-for-you in so many ways.  It’s rich in many valuable minerals like calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, silicon and sulfur in a form that is easily digestible and absorbed. It contains the anti-inflammatory amino acid arginine which helps to inhibit infections caused by cold and flu viruses.  And, for me most importantly of all, it’s a rare source of gelatin, a substance that attracts digestive juices and supports proper digestion.

Gella-what?  Remember that lime-green, wobbly mass shaped like an angel-food cake and specked with the half-moons of canned mandarin oranges?  No?  Wrong generation?  Ok, remember that plastic shot glass filled with candy-apple red that goes down in one schluuuurp?  That’s gelatin!  (And sugar, and artificial colors and flavors and, in some cases, vodka).

Gelatin is such a revolutionary component of bone broth because it is a water-loving, or hydrophillic, compound like most other foods in their raw state.  However, most foods we eat are cooked and have become in this cooking process hydrophobic, or water-resistant.  When we think of our digestive system–the flow of our digestive juices–it’s not hard to imagine why a diet high in cooked foods could be taxing.  This is the basis for the raw foodist ideology.  Even so, a diet based on raw foods does not support all climates,  lifestyles, nor bodily compositions.  Enter gelatin.

The gelatin content of bone broth is not altered during cooking, nor is the substance rendered hydrophobic in the process.  It’s easy to see why a vegetable soup cooked in bone broth is so profound.  All those cooked carrots and potatoes and onions digested within a water-loving compound; that’s some soup for the soul, indeed.

Chicken Bone Broth

For me, the greatest priority in broth making is getting your broth to gel.  This means that, when cooled, your broth should have the consistency of, well, JELL-O.  This can be ensured by paying particular heed to steps #1 and #5.

#1.  Use cartilaginous bones.

Collagen, which is found in cartilaginous bones like the joints, neck, head and feet, renders gelatin.  For chicken broth, I always use 2 chicken feet in addition to the other bones.  You can find chicken feet at your local butcher, or you can ask your local chicken farmer to bring you some.  They freeze well.

#2.  Use bones with some meat on them.

This will not affect the gelatin content of your broth, but will increase its flavor immensely.  I reserve the meat on the wings for my broth.

#3.  Add vegetable scraps (if you have them) or even whole vegetables.

Bone broth is a great way to make use of kitchen “waste”–onion skins, garlic skins, ends of carrots, potato peelings.  If you’re making broth weekly, you can store these in the fridge.  Otherwise, freeze them for later use.

Whole cloves of garlic, halved onions, halved potatoes all add flavor to your broth.

#4.  Fill a large stockpot with cold water and add the bones and feet and 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar.  Let sit for an hour.

The vinegar helps to draw out the minerals from the bones.

#5. Turn heat on medium-high.  When the liquid starts to roll, turn down heat immediately to low. At this point, there will be a good amount of foam on the surface of your broth.  Skim, skim, skim.

This foam contains surface impurities and will negatively affect the flavor of your broth.

#6.  Simmer, simmer, simmer.

I usually cook my chicken broth for 12 hours.  Some say the proper amount of time for chicken broth is between 4 and 6 hours, but I’ve found that my broth never gels in this time.  Experiment!  And please post your findings here!

This Spring, I recently discovered the wonder-powers of the slow-cooker for broth making.  It eliminates all of the leaving-my-stove-on-for-too-long anxiety and allows you to experiment with various cooking times with ease.

A pressure cooker will render a gelatin-rich broth, but many argue that it denatures the proteins in food.  I’ve never used one in broth making, and am not well-versed its mechanism.

#7.  Toss in a few sprigs of fresh parsley during the last 15 minutes of your simmer.

This will add minerals to your broth and complexity to its flavor.

#8.  Let cool in pot, then strain into sterilized glass jars.

These keep in the fridge for 4-5 days.  A layer of fat will form at the top of your cooled broth.  This helps preserve your broth and can also be used to, say, fry an onion, or cook an egg.

You can freeze your broth for later use.  Frozen broth will last indefinitely, it would seem.  I’ve experimented with freezing in glass jars, but have had inconsistent results–with the glass shattering more often than not.  I now use plastic bags, letting the broth cool completely before transferring it.