Bones, Broth, Bliss

When Michelle Tam was growing up in Menlo Park, Calif., in the 1980s, her family sipped broth with dinner every single night.

“We were full-on Cantonese,” Ms. Tam said, explaining that a light soup with herbs and perhaps a vegetable or two is an integral part of many traditional Chinese meals, acting as a digestive, a palate cleanser and a drink. “My mom used to make me go to the butcher and ask for the bones to make broth, which was totally embarrassing.”

Today, Ms. Tam writes and illustrates the popular Nom Nom Paleo blog, one of many sources devoted to Paleo eating, the diet du jour that is an exercise in eating “like our ancestors,” as adherents describe it, by which they mean the hunter-gatherers of the late Stone Age.

One of the cornerstones of the diet is “bone broth,” the clear, concentrated meaty elixir that home cooks and chefs have known more or less forever as stock. Those ancestors probably made theirs by dropping fire-heated rocks into the stomachs of whatever animals they managed to kill. The subsequent invention of the pot made soups, stocks and broths staples in virtually every corner of the culinary world.

Recently, this prehistoric food has improbably become a trend beverage, ranking with green juice and coconut water as the next magic potion in the eternal quest for perfect health. Like other health foods that have taken off in recent years — yogurt, quinoa — broth combines mystical connections to the ancient world and demonstrable nutrition benefits in the modern one.

“I would never have thought I’d be the person who makes homemade stock,” said Ms. Tam, who now saves bones from grass-fed beef and frequently produces batches of stock in her pressure cooker. She used to grab a box of shelf-stable stock when making soup or stew, figuring that organic was a good substitute for homemade. Now, she’s a convert to the real thing: the clear, bright, essential flavor that only fresh stock, made from high-quality ingredients, can provide.