Microwave for another 70 seconds. Watch to make sure it doesn't boil over. Eventually you'll find the best cook times for your equipment. Like, you might want to cook for 50 seconds, stir, and then do another 40 seconds. Sometimes I like to let is sit for a few minutes before adding the fresh fruit. Then,
You can also cook on the stovetop in a sauce pan on medium heat using the same steps.
This meal is an important part of my daily routine. I usually don't finish it all right away; I snack on it again through the morning. Then, I just have some more fruit or raw veggies for lunch... maybe a spinach smoothie.
I feel best when I don't eat any added sodium or salt until the evening, with dinner. I don't eat super low sodium; I try to get just the right amount. I enjoy a reasonable amount of sodium in my soups and stew, or wherever else I have for dinner. I find it easier to give up the saturated fats. It's only when I combine saturated fats and salt that I feel terrible.
I survived a small stroke and I sent some underlying condition into remission, which was likely causing the mini strokes. But, I'm still very sensitive to dietary factors that contribute to stroke and heart attack risk. The wrong foods effects my ability to work and engage socially. To be my most productive self, I avoid sodium or saturated fats throughout the day. Focusing on vitamin rich foods the first half the day. Then, I eat a dinner rich in minerals, including sodium, with some added organic canola oil to improve absorption.
Like walnuts and flax, canola is also high in omega-3, which is great for brain/nerve health. I buy organic because the generic oils have harsh pesticides and other chemicals. Even the cocoa powder is low in saturated fat because it's been defatted. I used to use dark chocolate but stopped after trying to avoid added lecithin. Some plant-milks have added lecithin but soy milk usually doesn't.
I prefer soy milk because it's high in protein. Some people are scared of soy but the plant estrogen isn't a health risk, instead, it has been shown to reduce the risk of prostate and breast cancer when swapped out with cow's milk. All plants have plant estrogen just as all animal products have animal estrogen. The plant estrogen is kinder to our bodies.
For my breakfast, I buy organic oats, flax, and soy milk. Grains, seeds, and beans retain more of the pesticides. Whereas fruits can be peeled or washed in water with salt to move almost all of them. Also, the organic oats, flax, and soy milk are surprisingly affordable.
As always, when making dietary changes with preexisting conditions, especially for people on medications, it is best to consult doctors, dieticians, and nutritionists. I'm just sharing what's worked best for me and why I've made my choices.
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Have a wonderful 2023!!!
]]>We should have a full variety of in-stock items at the markets. You can order in advance or place your order there.
If you are planning to ship your item to friends and family, we offer free shipping on orders over $22, when ordered online. After you order, email us with the order number and we'll include a small one line note on the shipping label like (A gift from "Bob Jones"). There no packing slip (price) in the box when we ship sets.
]]>Our seasonings are reduced-sodium compared to traditional canned soups; this means about 25% less. We do this for a couple reasons. One, so we could fit in more herbs and spices. Two, because the recipes sometimes call for canned foods that might contain salt. Three, our recipes don’t need as much salt because of the way Broth Bomb ® helps breakdown the foods, creating a richer broth full of minerals and natural flavorful compounds.
Our seasonings range from 196-393 mg of sodium, which is 9-17% daily value per cup. One cup is a side dish. The average person eats 2.5 cups of food for dinner. So if you're serving the stew over plain rice or a salt free bread, or both, the total sodium for the meal will be lower than if you eat a 24 ounce portion of stew.
Another reason I kept the sodium low is because I had a small stroke as at age 28. I am sensitive to too much sodium and want to enjoy my own seasoning blends. I'm also especially sensitive to high fat salty foods, which is why the recipes are all plant-based.
I typically don't eat anything with salt until dinner and don't eat many salted snacks. But sodium is an essential nutrient, we need some, so I try to get most of it with my dinner. Plus, having sodium with my veggies helps me eat more of them.
Unlike sodium, the other cardiovascular concerning foods, saturated fat and dietary cholestoral, are not essential nutrients. All of our suggested recipes (on the box) are centered around heart healthy foods like beans and greens. I subscribe to the thinking that if the best way to help people get more healthy whole plant foods into their lives is with just enough sodium and a dash of fun, then that’s a win for public health.
I felt the need to write this because soup has a reputation for being high in sodium but it’s actually average or lower compared to the other foods people eat most. The items below range from 160%-20% DV of sodium per serving.
One big difference between all these foods and Broth Bomb ® recipes is whole plant foods. Our recipes are for hearty stews packed with plant protein and fiber, not light soups. 700 mg of sodium would be a lot for condiments, side items, or snack foods, but not for the whole meal.
Lastly, some of that sodium in Broth Bomb comes from baking soda rather than salt. The Broth Bomb reaction creates sodium citrate and other titrate (tartar) type compounds that form in the stew. These sodium buffers have an opposite effect on blood pressure compared to salt. People who are sensitive to high salt foods, like me, tend to not have any issue with our products and recipes.
Sodium citrate is generally as safe as sodium chloride (salt). Although, if you have a have a health condition or you're treating a health conditions with medicine you should consult a doctor.
If low sodium is an absolute must for you, we've seen people use half of the Broth Bomb ® in the full recipe to meet their needs. Or serve a cup of stew on top of a cup of unsalted prepared rice. You’ll still get a good kick of flavor because they're so packed full of herbs and spices.
In care,
Andrew Laurent
*As always, please consult your own medical professions regarding your diet and using products like Broth Bomb. We are not offering medical advice. Broth Bomb is not intended to treat or cure any condition. Any health related claims have not been reviewed by the FDA.
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When cooking, you already have the ingredients out. Rather than only using half the onion leaving it to rot in the fridge, we recommend just adding the whole thing to the pot. This style of cooking is also known as “kitchen sink” recipes, where you just add everything from your fridge before it expires or before going shopping for the next week. We design our recipes to help peoplelearn to cook without as much food waste. If you have limited time or energy to dedicate to cooking, we recommend this method. We also design the recipes so you can use canned and frozen to reduce time/energy chopping produce.
Many of our Broth Bomb™ recipes were inspired by random dishes like this, which turned out to be amazing. The Drops of Jupiter recipe was one of these random creations, which we were eating when the “moment of genius” for Broth Bomb™ occurred. Andrew had been using baking soda to tenderize the beans and Renee suggested the idea of forming the seasonings to give as gifts.
People sometimes still ask for smaller Broth Bomb but handmaking smaller ones isn't economical either. We highly recommend trying our meal prep methods first. Here’s more helpful tips:
Preparations
When cooking with a Broth Bomb, it's not important to be exact this the volume of each ingredient, just fill up at least a 4-qt pot (5-qt preferred) with plenty of beans and veggies. We often swap out or add extra ingredients depending on what’s in the fridge and freezer... have some shredded carrots that need to be used? Throw it in the pot too.
How much water should you add?
The amount of water prior to heating should be slightly below the volume of the food. The water level will rise as the food releases into the broth. When you're about to add the Broth Bomb, once the food is all hot and ready, there should be a thin layer of steamy water/broth covering the top of the food. Too little and it will fizz slow, too much and it will fizz fast. Adding cold water just before, will also cause it to fizz slower.
What level heat?
With all the food (except Broth Bomb™) in the pot, bring to a boil on a high heat or medium high. The best fizz, for maximum ASMR fun, is achieved when the pot of food has been boiling for 8 minutes. At that point, turn off the heat for a minute or two; just as it stops boiling, drop the Broth Bomb™ and enjoy stirring/playing. Then, turn the heat to low and let cook for an hour. Return to a boil at the end or heat to 160F… this helps cook off the citrate and release more of the minerals (like calcium) from the food into the broth.
You can shorten the cook time and increase the heat level. After adding the Broth Bomb™, you could also transfer to a crock-pot or use a low setting for 4-8 hours and get a ‘souper’ tenderized stew.
Reheating
When storing Broth Bomb recipes in the fridge, they continue to marry the flavors… especially after a second quick cook. We’ve always enjoyed the left-overs even more. The 24 ounce deli containers make for perfect dinner portions, they freeze well, and are easy in the microwave. In the microwave, heat for 3 minutes, stir, and then heat another 3 minutes. On the stove top, in a small pot, heat on medium for 5 minutes, stir, and then heat another 5 minutes.
Leftover Shelf life
The fizzy ingredients act as a great natural preservative. We have enjoyed them up to three weeks later, stored only in the fridge. But this will vary based on factors unique to each kitchen and fridge; so we can't recommend more than 10 days. In the freezer, if store immedietly, they should be good for a year. Thaw them in the fridge the day before use and use withing 3 days.
Trust us, you will love having so many options in the freezer and fridge after a long day. As a single person, if you make two recipes a week, after two months you will stockpile a great variety of meal prep that you will be able to enjoy with little effort for half the year.
Need a good pot? We recommend these:
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We also don't buy any ingredients that have a "may contain" warning labels. Some of these suppliers may sell common food allergens but they don't make any warnings regarding cross contamination.
In regard to other less common allergens, only one has corn starch. Our citric acid is sometimes derived from corn but is claimed to be totally pure from source ingredients. One Broth Bomb has tapioca. There's mustard in a few. There's no beans or lentils in any of them. In regard to any ingredients that we handle, like corn startch or mustard, there is a small amount of cross contamination.
We don't handle any gluten containing ingredients, but we don't yet have any celiac certifications. The traditional testing method doesn't work on our unique products.
All of the ingredients are listed in every product page. Click the images to see the ingredient panel on the box.
]]>Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or health condition. We do not make any nutritional or health claims. Consult your physician if concerned about how any herbs, spices, or additives may affect your preexisting condition.
Broth Bomb Intended Use: Use only as directed to make at least one gallon of food on the stove top. Heat product to 160F. Cooking is not advised for children unless assisted by an adult. Don't use in the bath.
]]>The first villager, who anticipates enjoying a share of the soup, does not mind parting with a few carrots and adds them to the pot. Another villager hands them a little bit of cabbage. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, the stone is removed from the pot, and a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by everyone.
This old folk story highlights what we are trying to do at Broth Bomb™. Long before we perfected our recipes we cooked soups and stews with this sort of, whatever is on hand, strategy… and always cooking enough to share. Not every attempt came out great but they were always nourishing. Through these experiences we developed some amazing recipes.
Today's hungry travelers from this story are people living in poverty in food deserts that don't have access to fresh produce. We all chip in to help those in poverty but instead of a nutritious pot of food, due to their limited access, they end up with something much less healthy. Part of our mission is to show that with only canned foods found at corner stores, along with our product as the “stone soup” catalyst, that nutritious hearty stews are accessible to nearly every person.
We plan to offer our products at great discount to the small shops that are used by a large number of families suffering from this food desert phenomenon. This won't solve the problem of affordable access to fresh produce, we just hope to help make healthy meals more accessible to everyone. We’ll also be donating a portion of profits to causes that help end address this problem.
]]>We know some people are going to be unsure about using our chemistry trick to getting tender beans, which has never been used with food in this way. But it's as simple as adding baking powder to baked goods. Chefs have been using pH regulators for years, just never like this in stove-top cooking. We’re helping to make everyone a pro at cooking bean soup, stew, chili, and curry.
The fizz is made of common food pH regulators; a variety of dry powdered food grade acids and bases. Acids and bases are on opposite sides of the pH scale. These can include common food stuff like Vitamin C and calcium, to acidity regulators like baking soda and citric acid.
We have thoroughly tested and researched these products (not on animals). We are currently experimenting with adding fortified minerals and alternatives to citric acid; the formulas will change as we grow and are able to source these ingredients more easily.
We don’t make any claims of it being a cure or health aid, just that it is a safe and helps promote eating whole plant foods.
Let's first talk about citric acid. All living organisms make citric acid, even our own cells. It's a strong acid but not as strong as the acid in our stomach. This powdered acid has been used by doctors as a means to regulate gut bacteria, treating SIBO and other bacterial overgrowth. We source our citric acid from organic corn.
Baking soda, (sodium bicarbonate) is a naturally occurring compound in mineral rich waterways and deposits. It has long been used by doctors to neutralize stomach acid and to get a rise in baked goods. But like salt, consuming large amounts of baking soda can be dangerous. For instance, people who have ingested half a box of baking soda have been hospitalized due to electrolyte imbalance. Although, there's doctors who eat a tiny amount everyday and swear by the stuff. We don’t recommend consuming Broth Bomb™ uncooked. Simply heating baking soda will release the CO2 and deposit the sodium into the water; citric acid accelerates this reaction. The amount of sodium is slightly less than your average soup.
We don't advertise our product as a health aid; only as a fun way to refine the texture and taste of plant-foods. This post is about safety, not promoting Broth Bomb™ as a supplement.
Our intended use for Broth Bomb™ is to interact with the food and not our guts. Baking soda helps break down acids, like protein (amino acids) and the skins of beans. It loses its alkaline properties during these interactions and becomes part of the broth.
When you drop the Broth Bomb, some of it fizzes and some ends up in the broth interacting with the food. We recommend adding it once the stew has already gotten hot and the foods have begun to open up, allowing more interaction with acids and bases.
The finished meal is mildly acidic, for taste and optimal digestion. But no baking soda remains. Instead, there is a range of more pH balanced compounds like sodium citrate, titrate (from the tartar in bean skins), and sodium ascorbate (from vit c). Even these compounds break down the longer you cook the meal.
Sodium citrate is what's in those things people squeeze into their water for flavor, minus the sweeteners and coloring. Sodium Citrate is in countless products people buy every day. It's a very popular natural preservative, like salt. It actually helps to increase the shelf-life of the leftovers from the Broth Bomb™ recipes.
Sodium citrate has been well studied in its ability to quickly remove lactic acid during weight training type muscle activity. It should not be overconsumed, so not to unbalance the electrolytes in the body, but it has some health benefits in small amounts. People with preexisting condition should consult their doctor before use. We make this statement because we're a new product, but that disclaimer should be said of any product containing salt, cholesterol, nitrites, or saturated fat.
Now, we want to be clear that beans don't need Broth Bomb™. They're just good friends. If our product gets people to intake more whole plant foods and water, then it's a big win for public health, the environment, and farmed animals.
The only risk with Broth Bomb™ comes with people who misuse products, like by undercooking it or not using enough food. They'll notice it's too salty. We have disclaimers of intended use and warnings on the packaging of the product. We’re not responsible for misuse; even fruits and vegetables can be misused.
These flavor enhancing ingredients also allow us to reduce the amount of table salt needed to bring out the flavors of the other foods. We try to stay around 1 mg of sodium per calorie.
Through testing we also found that Broth Bomb™ takes the bite out of the red pepper in the Drunken Lentil recipe. It also takes the bite out of the leafy greens. Picky eaters find themselves loving every single one of the dishes. We’ve been amazed by the reviews by people saying their picky eaters have never eaten so many vegetables in their whole lives. We stumbled upon something totally amazing with this invention.
Another health note, citric acid has been shown to improve mineral absorption.
People assume all citric acid comes from black mold. It's true that industry often uses the lowest cost method and mold grows fast, but citric acid is present in all living organisms. Ours is derived from organic corn.
We also plan to offer a line of non-fizzing seasoning mixes for those people who would feel better without the fizz. We will be offering an organic line of seasoning mixes as soon as we can.
That's plenty of science info, but if you want to read on I’m going to get into some deeper mechanisms and theories for the science nerds out there.
In a Broth Bomb stew, what happens is much like what happens in our own guts. We produce acids to break down the starch fibers, while we produce high pH bile to break down the protein, which are made up of amino acids. We're doing some of this in the stew, which gives it a more palatable texture, especially for people used to processed foods. It pre-digests the food, like a marinade while cooking.
There's some new archeological theories about biology and diet emerging. Different from other omnivores, primates and humans have become designated as frugivores. Still being territorial animals, primates kill and sometimes eat rival primates. The motivation seems not to hunt for meat, but more territorial. Like to prevent their groves of fruits and nuts from being plundered. To a wild primate, the contents of the rivals’ stomachs would have been the secondary prize. They’ve been known to eat the flesh as well. But, biologically, animal flesh is not well suited for the primate digestive system. Primates, even humans, never evolved to have shorter digestive tracts or dispose of dietary cholesterol like true omnivores. Our ancestors had to resort to eating animal flesh for survival, but it was never ideal for living long disease free lives.
But what may have been advantageous, even still today, is consuming those predigested plants in the belly of other primates. While not necessary or advisable today, some paleo humans may have further benefited from packing the belly of a hunted animal with barks/herbs, veggies, and hard plant-foods like grains/nuts/seeds/tuber. Then using the animal as a sort of pot over coals/fire. Using the animals bile and acids to predigest the foraged plants would have had advantages much like cooking, by unlocking more of the nutrients of the plants.
As modern humans we have applied a wide range of processes, from heat to enzymes to pH chemistry, to create a great variety of foods. Today, it’s much safer to not use animals for protein, but rather mimic the processes with lab safe techniques made for our modern species. Paleo people were lucky to live past age 25. They didn't have to worry much about clogged arteries, colons, and infectious bacterial diseases, there were much bigger threats like starvation and predators. I tend to stick to modern science to see what’s ideal for human health, not theories on ancient people. But this natural chemical process is fascinating to explore.
While we know overly refined calories are not ideal for human health, there’s cause to consider the benefits of marginally processed whole plant-foods. Cooking, enzymes, and pH buffers are types of these. We should favor processed that keep the fiber and give us more access to the nutrients.
Baking soda has always been a known trick for getting softer beans. Soaking them overnight with a high pH solution breaks down the tannins in the skin. No one has ever considered a way to cook stews with the baking soda, without discarding the alkaline water/broth, until now.
On a side note in regard to the paleo topic, we may never know if fire was first used to cook tubers (root vegetables) or cook animals, but the leading theory is now that the access to complex carbohydrates is what fueled the human brain growth and intelligence. There’s starch genes and other evidence dating back to the early paleo periods, when most paleo human stool samples showed evidence of nothing more than a couple insects in regard to animal consumption.
We believe that wit Broth Bomb™ we found a great modern balance of cooking methods to help access more nutrients without over processing these plant foods. But we’d rather just focus on the fact they’re safe, make cooking fun, and improve the texture of plant foods for picky primates.
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