Still cooking bone broth for 12-18 hours in a slow cooker? This type of cooking is long and destructive to the nutrients in the food. There is another way of cooking bone broth but in less than 3 hours! No nutritional compromise, no toxins from the pot leaching in, and the broth is more delicious according to cooks who do it this way!
Traditional slow cooking is great, but it takes many hours and destroys the food’s nutrients in two ways:
Traditional slow cookers are made from metal or ceramic pots. All metals are reactive, no matter which one you choose – cast iron, stainless steel, copper, aluminum, titanium etc. The ceramic material which is a composition of metal ores, oxides and chemicals are no different. These elements react with nutrients present in food. This makes the food toxic. These toxins are like slow poison in the body. The metal toxins keep accumulating in organs, tissues, and blood and cause damage to body functions and immunity. As a result, we start getting sick and the sickness may range from minor illness, infections to serious diseases like cancer.
The practice of slow cooking evolved as a result of trying to keep the nutrients intact. People said, if the pot’s heat is destroying the food, let’s try to cook the same food on low heat for long hours and hopefully preserve the nutrients, but tests show otherwise.
Scientific Testing Shows Food’s nutrients are DEAD with long hours of slow cooking
Scientific research done on amino acid lysine in peanuts showed that long hours of cooking even at 220°F destroyed this nutrient:
Twenty percent of it had been found to get cooked out after an hour and a half exposure to 150°F heat. After two and one-half hours, 40% was lost. According to World’s Healthiest Foods, the majority of vitamins have less heat stability than this amino acid. So, a greater amount of loss of most vitamins and minerals can be expected when cooked at 200°F over six to eight hours.
So which material is healthier and why?
For healthy cooking, you need a cookware made from 100% non-toxic, healthy material that preserves nutrients. Primary clay or pure clay is one of the best non-toxic materials that’s been used for thousands of years. It is naturally inert and free from contaminants. But more importantly, you can cook bone broth in less than 3 hours if beef bone and 1.5 hours if chicken, and right on the stove-top!
More importantly, the heat from the walls of these pots is gentle and non-destructive – the same kind of life-giving heat the earth radiates (pure-clay is a pure and uncontaminated “earth”)
Here’s how to cook bone broth in less than 3 hours on the stove-top:
Following any recipe, add all the ingredients, set the pot on your stove and start on medium.
Once the food is cooking and boiling for about 40 minutes, reduce heat to low – and let it cook at that temperature till fully done.
You can know when the broth is done when the bones are thoroughly cooked and will be of a softer chew-able consistency (if chicken bones). The soup will be savory and any meat will be falling off the bones. The beef bone may not be chew-able like chicken but they would look a shade or two darker than how they started, and the broth savory. When it starts cooling down, the broth will be thick and gelatinous.
By cooking at medium heat, you get the food cooking sooner, saving time but without damaging nutrients because the heat from the walls of pure-clay is safe and gentle, unlike from metal and ceramic pots.
More features that make it ideal for slow cooking:
- Pure clay pots are great retainers of heat – keeps food warm for hours after the stove is turned off.
- The conventional slow cookers take 12-18 hours for beef and 12-14 hours for chicken. They take less than 3 hours in a pure clay pot.
- Pure clay pots are semi-porous, oxygen can pass through them. Your food is cooked with sufficient oxygen and just the right amount of heat. In the words of some experienced pure clay cooks: “it turns out to be soft, juicy and delicious!”