Broths & stocksPublished 6 November 2026
How to make bone broth at home
Bones, cold water and a long, low simmer. Everything else is a choice about colour, depth and how many hours you want the hob on.
Pick the bones for the broth you want
Directo al Paladar’s bone broth starts from a mix of bones: beef bone, beef knee bone, salted pork spine, a marrow shank bone and a ham bone or ham end, with four to five litres of water. That recipe adds no vegetables and no vinegar, and it does not blanch the bones first.
For a lighter, paler stock, Eroski Consumer puts bones or poultry carcasses into cold water with carrot, onion and leek greens in large pieces and a little white wine. For a darker one it browns the bones in a hot oven first, browns the vegetables with them, then deglazes the roasting pan with red wine before everything goes into the pot.
Roast them for colour and depth
Not every recipe roasts: Eroski’s white stock does not. Those that do, do it very differently. Directo al Paladar washes its bones and gives them 15 minutes at 180 °C for the bone broth. Its dark stock, a base for sauces, rice and stews rather than something to drink as it is, goes much further: shank and knee bones plus about 750 g of shin, around two kilos in all, roasted at 190 °C for about an hour and a half with half the vegetables, turned at 45 minutes.
Directo al Paladar’s drinking broth gets the short roast; its sauce base gets the long one.
Give it hours, not a fixed number
There is no single correct time, and the sources say so by disagreeing. Eroski Consumer gives beef, veal or ox bones four hours at a gentle, steady simmer, and poultry an hour and a half. Directo al Paladar says six to seven hours of slow simmering gives a good broth and calls 24 hours, up to 36, ideal. Its dark stock simmers at the lowest heat for 12 to 24 hours, with the second half of the vegetables added after about eight hours and one or two hours more after that.
Two other routes:
- Slow cooker or covered pot: Directo al Paladar leaves a small gap under the lid and runs it for 24 hours, checking the liquid every hour.
- Pressure cooker: one to one and a half hours in the same source’s introduction, two hours at the lowest pressure setting in its method. Expect a cloudier result.
On the hob, Eroski Consumer’s advice for its dark stock is a gentle simmer, so the stock does not cloud.
Skim, strain and cool it quickly
Skim the foam early. Eroski Consumer skims once the pot comes to the boil; Directo al Paladar takes off foam and excess fat after five to six hours. Lift out the bones, then strain through a fine sieve or a cloth. The dark stock recipe ends with about three litres.
Cooling is where food safety comes in. Spain’s food safety agency, AESAN, says leftovers should go into the fridge as soon as possible and should not stand at room temperature for more than two hours. Cooked food is kept either above 60 °C or at 5 °C at most, and leftovers are reheated to 70 °C for two minutes. The European Food Safety Authority gives the same two-hour limit, asks you to refrigerate cooked food below 5 °C as soon as you can, and to reheat it thoroughly.
How many days it keeps in the fridge is less settled. Neither AESAN nor EFSA gives a number of days, and the two recipe pages disagree. Go by the shorter figure: two or three days, from Directo al Paladar’s bone broth recipe, and freeze the rest in jars. For how storage works once food is dried, see how long freeze-dried food lasts.
Why we only talk about taste
The EU’s list of permitted claims, as adopted in 2012, has no entry for collagen, gelatine or broth. Two claims for collagen hydrolysate, one about joints and one about skin elasticity, were assessed by the European Food Safety Authority and refused by Commission regulation.
So we stick to what it tastes like: savoury and beefy, with onion, carrot and bay behind it. Good in a mug on a cold evening, or as the base for a rice dish or a soup.
The numbers
| Pouch | Net weight | Water | Hot water | Cold water |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beef Bone Broth | 60 g | 250 ml per 10 g cup | 1 minute | Hot water only |
| Puchero Broth | 60 g | 250 ml per 10 g cup | 1 minute | Hot water only |
| Vegetable Stock | 60 g | 250 ml per 10 g cup | 1 minute | Hot water only |
Skip the simmer, keep the method
Our Beef Bone Broth follows the same steps: beef bones are roasted, then simmered with onion, carrot, leek, bay and pepper. The broth is strained, the fat is taken off, it is reduced, and only then freeze-dried.
What you get is a pouch of dry broth. Stir a cup’s worth into hot water from the kettle and it is ready in a mug. It needs hot water: it does not work cold. If you’d rather something else in the mug, the Puchero Broth and the Vegetable Stock work the same way.
Sources
- Directo al Paladar, Cómo hacer caldo de huesos casero, la receta definitiva
- Directo al Paladar, Cómo hacer un fondo oscuro
- Eroski Consumer, Los caldos de carne
- Eroski Consumer, Los caldos básicos de cocina
- AESAN, Prevenir intoxicaciones alimentarias en verano
- EFSA, Safe2Eat: proper food handling (page in Spanish)
- Commission Regulation (EU) No 379/2012 (legislation.gov.uk)
- Commission Regulation (EU) No 1154/2014 (legislation.gov.uk)
- Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 (legislation.gov.uk)
Accessed 6 November 2026.