by Meghan Bean Flaherty
1. Visit nutritionist. Submit to sermon on restorative powers of gelatin, glucosamine, and collagen. Admit to gut neglect and gluten poisoning. Embrace wellness. Accept the broth into your heart. Resolve to save and boil bones and drink the marrow out of life.
2. Research Crock-Pots online. Neglect no comment or review — no matter how grammatically deranged. (Can be done weeks in advance.)
3. Purchase VitaClay slow-cooking appliance ($139) so as to avoid trace quantities of lead leaching into (health) food.
4. Unpack and “season” VitaClay slow-cooking appliance by boiling brown rice for two to three hours, or until heating element first-use smell abates.
5. Dump hot rice mush into bin.
6. Attempt first bone broth. Assemble in clay vessel: carcass of one lovingly pre-roasted chicken, plus variety of soup vegetables, plus parsley springs and splash of apple cider vinegar.
7. Further peruse instruction manual. Discover real bone broth requires twenty-four hours of simmer time; VitaClay maximum is six.
8. Call company. Tweet company. Submit customer service inquiry through company website. Await phone call from well-meaning representative who expresses fulsome sympathy, but advises against off-label usage of appliance.
9. Transfer broth ingredients to normal four-quart saucepan. Bring to boil.
10. Dig rice-mushed plastic packaging from bin. Rinse away starchy slime. Hold over AC vent and, when that fails, pat dry.
11. Ferret through recycling for Styrofoam and cardboard padding. Reclaim UPS delivery box. Evict spider. Wash, dry, and Windex VitaClay. Wipe chicken-greasy fingerprints from manual. Repackage and submit for refund.
12. Go out for evening. Experience pang of worry for the dog vis-à-vis unattended gas flame and irresistible bubbly chicken fat smell. Double back to turn off burner and avoid pet-maiming by ungelled broth. Decide to cheat bacteria by boiling overnight instead.
13. Bedtime. Set broth to simmer (eight hours on “low.”)
14. Despite pervasive, sleep-disrupting aroma, realize broth has not been simmering overnight, though could be considered “warm.”
15. Google “chicken broth safety.” Discover existence of USDA poultry preparation hotline. Call.
16. Wait two hours for poultry-fairy staff meeting to adjourn.
17. Utilize online chat function to “Ask Karen” “about your bone broth situation.”
18. Per Karen, discard entire pot of warmish broth-to-be and all attendant food-borne bugs. Despair at lingering soup aroma. (Others will remark your house smells like Thanksgiving; accept this as the smell of failure.)
19. Order standard-issue lead-leaching Crock-pot from Internet sales megagiant ($39).
20. Roast new chicken, this time with less love. De-meat carcass. Repeat step five, this time in Crock-pot.
21. Set to “low” for twenty-four hours. (Thanks, “Karen”!)
22. Embrace triggering soup aroma. Stir occasionally.
23. Delay pleasure of triumphant decantation moment (six hours).
24. Enlist aid of boyfriend to hold jar under sieve. Hoist three-hundred-pound (approx.) ceramic crock and attempt to pour out manageable stream while avoiding cascade of molten bone shards and bits of chicken blubber. Miss.
25. Acquire small second-degree burn. Replace jar with wide glass bowl and place in sink.
26. Miss again. Lose grip on crock. Drop crock onto sieve/bowl cairn in sink. Lose approx. half of bowl contents.
27. Curse vigorously.
28. Salvage remaining broth. Watch with horror as boyfriend splashes broth-tinged contents of previously dirty sink dish into broth.
29. Spoon out floating coffee grinds.
30. Finish decantation (one-quarter cup.) Re-boil broth to rid of contaminants.
31. Find the smell of chicken soup hereafter deeply troubling.
32. Consider pressure-cooker method advocated by more successful bone-boiling compatriot.
33. Fill two small jars with broth. Drink one, despite suspect detritus. Forget the other in the fridge (one week); discard with regret.
Prep time: 2 weeks. Cook-time: 3 days.
Serves: 1
Photo by Omid Tavallai
