Crock Pot Beef Stew with Pastured Soup Bones

A good slow-cooker meal is worth its weight in gold. However, by using soup bones in place of the stew meat you can actually save that gold ($$) and up the nutritional content as well. (You can read about the benefits of bone broth here and pastured meat here.) The pastured soup bones I use have a good amount of meat on them and go for $3.90 for about .70 pounds. Depending on how much meat you like you can use one to two soup bones for the stew.

Crock Pot Beef Stew with Pastured Soup Bones By: Living Life Granola Printable recipe here.

1-2 soup bones (under 1lb each) 2 carrots, peeled, large chop 2 sm. or med. potatoes, scrubbed, cubed 1 med. onion, diced 1- 14oz can Eden or Muir Glen brand, diced tomatoes (they don't use BPA in the can lining) 2 cloves garlic, diced 2 tbsp dried or 1 tbsp fresh thyme 2 bay leaves 1 tsp salt pepper to taste 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (this helps extract the minerals from the bone) 1-1/2 cups bone broth or filtered water Rice to serve. Use organic ingredients whenever possible. Brown soup bone(s) for 2 minutes per side and place in the bottom of the crock pot. Add the rest of the ingredients into the crock and mix gently, keeping the soup bone(s) on the bottom. Cook on low for 8 to 10 hours. Take out the soup bone(s) and shred the meat and discard the bone(s). Return the meat to the crock. Serve in bowls over rice.

This is one of my favorite meals and it makes the house smell like Emeril has been cooking up a storm in your kitchen for hours. After I have the crock pot all set up, I will put one cup of rice into a saucepan with warm water and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to soak for 8 hours before it gets boiled. This allows the rice to become more digestible and not as irritating to the digestive track. (A post on soaking and sprouting is coming up, I promise!) This is a great recipe to try if you are new to pastured meats and trying to cut back on the amount of meat consumed during a meal. Enjoy!

Linked with the Simply Natural Saturday blog series.