Easiest and Best Instant Pot Bone Broth

Spicy & Sweet Roasted Cauliflower

ranch@glaciergrown.com (Karen Dunham) — Thu, 09 May 2024 20:25:45 GMT

I made this up on accident one night when I was roasting cauliflower and obsessing over this Crunchy Chile Onion stuff from Trader Joe’s. I thought it might taste good w ith a little bit of sweet…..it did! We all loved it. Super easy and yummy.

What you need:

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets (or use the easy button and buy a bag of florets at Costco)

Avocado Oil

Salt ( I love Redmond Smoked Real Salt . I don't get any money from these links, I just love it )

Glacier Grown Raw Honey

Crunchy Chile Onion (Trader Joe’s is the brand that I hoard when we are around a TJ’s)

What to do:

Toss the Cauliflower in some Avocado Oil. Spread on a Stainless Steel Cookie Sheet. Sprinkle with coarse salt and bake at 400 degrees for about 20-25 minutes to desired tenderness. Drizzle 1- 2 T of raw honey and 1- 2 T of Crispy Chile Onions over the top. Delish!

Honey B's Modifiable Granola

ranch@glaciergrown.com (Karen Dunham) — Thu, 09 May 2024 20:13:21 GMT

We have used this granola recipe for years - my friend Honey B. shared it with me when my kids were little. They still ask me to make it for them when they are home. I’m really bad about following recipes exactly, so I modify it a little each time I make it depending on what I’ve got and what looks good.

What you need

6 c. organic oats

2 c. flake cereal ( I love this one )

2 c. roughly chopped nuts

a pinch or two of salt

“some” flax seed, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sunflower seed, and/or hemp hearts (optional)

3/4 c grass fed butter

3/4 c. raw honey (or maple syrup)

dried fruit (optional)

What to do

Combine the first three ingredients and any extra seeds that you want to add, to a large bowl. Melt the butter and honey together then pour over everything. Stir until well combined. Spread out on a rimmed, stainless baking sheet. Bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes, stirring and re-spreading every 15 minutes. If you are adding dried fruit, stir it in after cooking.

TIPS - this recipe is pretty forgiving. Sometimes I add more flakes and less oats. Sometimes I add seeds instead of some of the oats; sometimes I add seeds in addition to everything listed. If I’m adding and not substituting, I usually add a bit more butter and/or honey to make sure everything sticks together. Try a few versions and see what you like.

Ginger Lemon Tea with Raw Honey

ranch@glaciergrown.com (Karen Dunham) — Thu, 09 May 2024 19:50:15 GMT

This tea is easy, delicious and great for your gut and immune system. It's so much better than a store bought tea bag!

What you need

1” - 2” Ginger Knob, peeled and chopped very small

Juice of 1 Lemon

Water that is just below boiling

Raw Honey

What to do

Add the peeled, diced ginger and the lemon juice to a tea pot. Add hot water. Let that concoction steep for at least 5 minutes - the longer, the stronger the ginger taste. Once your tea cools to around 95-100 degrees, so that you don’t lose any of the amazing properties of that Raw Honey, add a big scoop of it and stir to dissolve. Use a fine mesh strainer, if your tea pot doesn’t have one in it, to pour into cups and enjoy!

Tips: It may be common knowledge that scraping the ginger peel off with a spoon, instead of a knife or vegetable peeler, is a peeling game changer - super easy and quick, but it was new news to me recently. Where have I been? Also, if your ginger is really juicy, simply chop it up unpeeled and throw it all in the tea pot. Just make sure you’re using organic ginger if you’re going to include the peel. You can also make a second pot of tea using the same ginger. You’ll just need to let it steep longer the second time for it to have a strong ginger taste.

Wonderful Things about Raw Honey

ranch@glaciergrown.com (Karen Dunham) — Fri, 03 May 2024 22:27:41 GMT

Raw Honey is one truly amazing substance. We all know that it tastes fantastic, but did you know that it also provides a myriad of health benefits for us both internally and externally?

First, let’s talk about what defines Raw Honey as opposed to conventional honey. Raw Honey is not filtered, but instead is strained, often gravitationally, in order to remove bits of beeswax, bee parts, dead bees, and other impurities that are in the hives and honey frames. To be considered raw, honey isn't heat extracted from the frames or ever heated above the temperature that bees keep their hives (around 95-105 degrees) in order to strain or pour it. This careful process allows the honey to keep all of the beneficial nutrients that are naturally present in the hive, including pollen and propolis.

According to Dr. Josh Axe, Raw Honey is a “functional food” containing 22 amino acids, 27 minerals, 5000 enzymes, and at least 16 known antioxidants. Raw Honey is also anti-fungal, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory and antiseptic. These properties make Raw Honey perfect for applying to wounds and killing infections as well as taking internally for digestive and gut issues. Personally, we have used raw honey to heal a staph infection, and it also worked wonders for me when I had a case of food poisoning.

This fabulous substance is full of phytonutrients, phytochemicals, and polyphenols that act as antioxidants, hunting down free radicals within the body, boosting our immune systems and unlocking neuroprotective functions that aid in brain performance.

Raw Honey does all of the above, and it even tastes fantastic too! Isn’t that crazy? I mean, we all know how great liver is for you, but it definitely does NOT taste anything like honey.

There are some other very interesting aspects about Raw Honey as well. For instance, Raw Honey never goes bad. It can freeze with no change in properties, and if you happen to stash a container in your storage room and find it years later (that'd be me!), it will still be perfectly fine - just hardened or crystallized. And speaking of crystallizing and hardening, honey does one or the other depending on the climate, water content, and conditions during the year in which it was made. Personally, I LOVE hardened honey, but most years, honey tends to crystallize rather than harden. Honey is harvested once a year, and so over the course of that year, it crystallizes (or hardens); some years it crystallizes quickly and other years more slowly. Our bee keeper says that honey is alive and can change in color and texture from year to year, even within the same hives that are in the exact location. It is a truly miraculous product.

We LOVE our Raw Honey. We’ve never tasted anything like it. I never particularly liked honey, and I NEVER would have licked the honey spoon, until I tried the honey we sell at Glacier Grown. That super dark stuff that the grocery stores call honey is a far inferior product. I’ve even had some honeys that are called raw, but are pretty terrible. You don’t have to sacrifice taste for quality and nutritional benefit - you can have both!!

If you haven’t tried our honey yet, do yourself a favor and give it a shot . We have some in stock now, from last fall’s harvest, but with the summer farm stand season starting in May, I’m expecting that we will sell it all prior to the 2024 honey being ready at the end of September. Running out of Glacier Grown Raw Honey is never a good thing.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and just HELLO!

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 21:55:40 GMT

It's Been A While

It's been a while since we've been in touch. The last 6 months have been a wild and woolly ride over at the Dunham household, but we've finally come up for air. We hope that you and yours enjoyed a lovely holiday season and that you have headed into the New Year full of hope and enthusiasm.

Those of you who have been with us for years, undoubtedly, see a different group of people in the above photo than when we made deliveries to Southern California in the past. All of those previously little people have grown up - the baby started college this past year, and the oldest has a baby of his own. All in the blink of an eye.

We wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you - we appreciate you and your continued support. It is a privilege to provide the very best 100% grass fed, grass finished, pasture raised, chemical-free, humanely raised meats that our northwest corner has to offer.

If you are looking to stock your freezer for the next few months, before spring deliveries begin (we will start taking orders in March and deliveries will start in late May/early June), we still have some items remaining from the Fall Harvest ready to ship.

Thoughts on Cooking Bison

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 07:21:46 GMT

I have some thoughts on cooking bison that I wanted to share

It is usually said that bison should be cooked at a lower temperature and for less time than beef, but I’m not sure I completely agree. Although bison steaks should be cooked low, slow, and for less time than beef, it has not been my experience that other cuts of bison work that way. Braising cuts are more my speciality than grilling cuts. You’d actually be horrified if you knew how many high end, super expensive steaks I have ruined….not kidding. Ironic isn’t it? A meat purveyor who can’t cook steaks? UGH!! I recently purchased a digital meat thermometer and I’m hoping that helps break the curse. But back to my point - I find that for anything other than steaks, bison needs to cook for quite a bit longer than beef. There is a rubbery quality about bison when it is under cooked. I fear that more than one, first time bison-eater has been turned off by this quality, blaming it on the beast itself, when it is actually user error. It took me a long time to figure it out myself; I used to wonder why it sometimes had a chewy texture and sometimes it did not - definitely my problem, not the meat.

Because cooking time varies depending on the individual cut and its size, I can’t even give you specifics on how long it needs to cook. I know that in my Instant Pot, I cook bison stew meat for about 7-8 minutes longer than beef stew meat. Roasts sometimes need to cook for 10-20 minutes longer than beef in the Instant Pot. I can also tell you that when your bison is cooked to doneness, you will be rewarded by tender, falling apart, delectable morsels that will make you wish you had more. So - I’ll keep you posted on my thoughts about the steaks after I use my thermometer and stop ruining them. But, for any other cut, do yourself a favor and go a little more than the recipe calls for - then test it. It if isn’t amazing, then it isn’t done yet!

Instant Pot Bone Broth

Sat, 20 Jul 2019 03:13:27 GMT

Easiest and Best Bone Broth

Summer isn’t really when you think of making soups and stews, but it is a great time to stock up on bone broth for winter. I use bone broth for any liquid called for in a recipe…..well, except desserts, of course….bison flavored cake? - um, no. On average, we go through about 2-3 quarts of bone broth a week, so stocking up is a must. When you make broth in an Instant Pot or a Crock Pot, the kitchen stays cool. I used to cook my broth in the crock pot for at least 24 hours(which actually works great), and my family wanted to die because of the smell. When Brad asked me to move the bone-making razzmatazz to the garage, I was not happy - what a pain, so....enter the Instant Pot. My Instant Pot is my favorite kitchen appliance (okay, so it's tied with my immersion blender), but I was skeptical about using the Instant Pot for bone broth initially - it just seemed way too easy and like it couldn’t be as good as the long-term cooking option. But my vision of the "crock pot in the garage" looked like this: I take it to the garage to cook, I forget about it and after two days the water is cooked so far down that I have to add water and keep cooking, I forget again but this time the water cooks all the way out, I ruin the crockpot and have to go to Costco and get another one. Rinse, repeat! So……I tried the Instant Pot - and it is awesome. The bones seem to break down just as well in the I.P., AND IT’S DONE IN NO TIME!! So - no garage bone broth for me (or multiple new crock pot purchases per year - you think I’m kidding, but I’m not. Really!!). This process is an amazing no-brainer and it allows me to keep the broth coming - because being out of bone broth is a minor emergency in my world - and I'm not dramatic at all.

The Method :

Use 1 pack of frozen bones/shanks - I only use defrosted bones if I got them out meaning to make broth right away, but forgot about them until they were defrosted. Our Shanks/Osso Bucco (bison and beef ), a pack of which are pictured above, have lots of meat on them. Our Soup Bones are a combination of neck bones with meat, knuckle bones, and marrow bones. We have also just started selling marrow bones, with no meat, as an add-on item (contact us to add these to an existing order - each bone is approximately 1.5 lbs @ $7.99/lb. )

Add the bones and about 2 Tablespoons of Sea Salt to your Instant Pot and cover with about 10-12 cups of water. You may want to adjust the amount of salt and water after you’ve made some this way and see what you like.

Cook on high pressure for 3 hours …..some people just cook for 1 hour, but I like to go longer. Let the pressure come down on its own . At that point you can open the top. I like starting mine at night and letting it lose pressure and even cool down on its own so that in the morning I can open the I.P. with no smell (my family appreciates that, and so will yours!).

Pour the contents through a colander, catching the broth in a big bowl, then make sure you get all of the marrow out of the bones and dump it into the broth.

Use your immersion blender to blend it all up . I used to strain everything through cheesecloth, and if you want your broth to be clear then go ahead and do that. It takes so much more time, and I don’t care if my broth has little bits in it. Since I’m using it for stews, soups, braising vegetables, and adding to other things in recipes I figure it doesn’t really matter.

Pour into jars or containers, using a big measuring cup (or whatever). If freezing in jars, be sure to leave lots of head space, like below the shoulders of the jar, or they can break when freezing which really stinks, and is counter - productive. I know it’s not great - THEY say - to freeze in plastic containers, but sometimes I do. I need to find something that won’t crack and that has a large opening so that I don’t have to wait for my containers to thaw before using them….I’m sort of last minute sometimes and forget to take it out of the freezer.

I love the shanks best because there is so much meat on them. After cooking, I save and freeze the meat until I have enough to make enchiladas. The above is a quart container and the meat from one pack of shanks gave me just over 1/2 quart of meat. Also….FYI - beef broth is wonderful, but bison broth is amazing….absolutely the best. It is different in that it doesn’t coagulate like beef, which some people don't prefer, but I’m okay with it.

Enjoy! I always keep a quart of broth in the fridge and the rest in the freezer. It goes so fast during the winter/fall (well, really all the rest of the year except summer - and even some days in summer that feel like winter-lite; welcome to Montana), that I make it a lot.

Lamb Ribs

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 02:16:36 GMT

Lamb Ribs are one of my new favs. After sufficiently destroying 2 attempts at them (one was totally inedible - user error for sure!), I resorted to asking our grower, Justin, how he cooks ribs because he told me that they are a family and guest favorite at his house. Not that you need it or that you are in the same boat as I am, but I thought that maybe there is someone out there who might need some lamb rib help. Here is his reply:

We grill them over an apple wood fire, which gives good smoke flavor. Baste with your sauce and grill until most fat is cooked off and ribs are caramelized. Finish in the oven on low heat, basting with sauce. Keep ribs on an elevated rack while in the oven so the fatty drippings are falling below the ribs (which should be done with most cuts). Cook till totally tender. I basically watch them like a hawk through the process. I start with a hotter fire under them, but try to let the fire go down and just have coals under them with more smoke when on the grill, so that it's not intense heat the whole time. I mainly want the sear and the smoke. The basting is important -pull them off and bast them so they don’t get dry .

So….my first disclaimer is that I am the worst at actually following recipes exactly. Sometimes that comes back to bite me (refer to above failed lamb rib attempts). My second disclaimer is that my photos are not foodie worthy - sorry. With that out of the way, here’s how I cooked them:

I used a homemade Teriyaki sauce (Whole 30 compliant, from this justjessieb.com recipe). I placed the ribs on a broiling pan so that fat drippings would drop below the ribs, brushed with teriyaki sauce, and broiled them for about 10 minutes - until they were carmelized and some fat had burned off (Justin says that is a key element - burning off the fat). Then, I turned them over and broiled for a bit more. I LOVE my industrial stove, but HATE my broiler - watch the ribs carefully - your broiler is probably better than mine and I’d hate for you to burn these. I then turned the heat down to 300 and let the ribs cook for about 45 minutes, basting every little while (how’s that for accuracy?). They were deliciously crispy and tender and I didn't want to share them with anyone else - but I would have felt bad about that, so I did! But, I did manage to eat all the leftovers myself the next day….while everyone else was out of the room! I felt kind of bad, but not bad enough to not do it! There weren’t very many left anyway. I’m now out of ribs….and I’m thinking that maybe I should break open a lamb that’s in the freezer and decide that we need a whole ‘nother lamb (instead of eating the remaining cuts that are left of our lamb that’s already in the freezer first - I know, that’s sort of ridiculous, so I won’t do it, but I want to….exercising self-control).

Teriyaki Sauce - Paleo & Whole 30 Compliant
1/3 cup coconut aminos**

2 T balsamic vinegar

2 T avocado oil

2 t minced garlic

1/2 T Dijon Mustard

1/2 t dried ginger

pinch of red pepper flakes (I omitted because I was out)

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Continue to cook, stirring often, allowing the sauce to reduce and thicken. Turn the heat off once it reaches desired consistency. MAKE A DOUBLE BATCH AND USE ON EVERYTHING!!! It is awesome. Store in the fridge.

** as far as coconut aminos go, I used to hate these darn things - I am a serious Tamari fan (pretty sure I could drink it…maybe I have, no admission though). Everyone recommends Coconut Secret brand, but…..have you tried Big Tree Farms Coco Aminos?? If not, it is a game changer….get yourself some and thank me. I found it by chance at Costco in San Diego - $8.99 for a really big bottle - and I was excited. Once I tasted it I was addicted. I have looked at Costco in Salt Lake City and Phoenix with no luck….and there’s no way that our Costco in po-dunk no where, Kalispell, MT will have these until about the year 2030 - we are a little behind the times. So, I resorted to buying it at the local health food store for a bottle about the size of a thimble for $5.99. But, desperate times call for desperate measures…..not kidding. Try this stuff - the teriyaki AND the Big Tree Farms Coco Aminos. You can buy the Costco size bottle here on Amazon , but it’s about double the price - but better than the thimble size price (duh on me).

Winter

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 21:05:33 GMT

The calm after the storm... and apparently before the next one too

Greetings from Northwest Montana , where we’ve had an entire winter’s worth of snow and frigid in just 4 weeks. I’ve included a photo so that you can get a visual - see that bump in the yard? That’s a picnic table! See how the snow is about up to the table? Eeek! The first half of our winter was pretty mild - we had a White Christmas, but just barely. Our temps hovered between the high 20’s - 40’s for most of November - January. I know that sounds super cold, but it’s not. To give you some perspective, we were in San Diego one fall about 5 years ago for a delivery. Remember when we used to deliver? We miss those days - not the total chaos that our lives were, but we truly miss seeing you all face-to-face! So, that fall, it was 40 degrees in SD for a few days and we froze our tails (and other parts) off. Of course, it was negative 18 here in Kalispell during that time, and so we were thankful to be “freezing”, figuratively, in CA rather than freezing, literally, in MT! All that to say, 40 degrees in Southern CA, because of the moisture in the air, is not the same as 40 degrees in MT…..YOUR 40 degrees is COLD…our 40 degrees is picnic weather (well….not quite, but you get the picture). So, the first half of winter meant picnic weather and clear roads (hallelujah!), and I was thankful. But then, January 23rd showed up and we got a whopping 16” overnight….and the snow just keeps coming. Last night, there wasn’t snow in the forecast and then it started snowing and they declared a severe winter storm warning with an “emergency travel only” declaration. What the heck? We are all done….but, alas, we are not apparently. All I know is that I’m thankful this didn’t happen in December, because I would have been in the depths of despair imagining what the next few months would have been like. As it stands currently, though, we have no idea WHERE we will put the rest of the snow being forecasted for the next couple of weeks, we do know that winter won’t be here forever and that spring is just around the proverbial, albeit somewhat long and winding, corner. We take heart in knowing that all this snow will aid in producing our amazing nutrient dense grass, exclusive to the Eastern Front of Montana, which is instrumental in raising the nation’s happiest and healthiest animals for your table. I know where you think happy cows come from…..that was a nice ad campaign, but I beg to differ!

Knowing that spring will indeed arrive…. we will start taking orders on 10th for our spring harvest.

Until then, we have some items remaining, and if you are needing some beautiful grass fed, grass finished, free range, clean bison, beef, or lamb before we start shipping again in June - now’s the time to order.

On a really cheerful note, did you know that 2 of our country’s worst blizzards occurred on March 11 - 12?? Yeah, I’m trying to ignore that too.

Bison Vs. Beef

Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:51:03 GMT

We enjoy, eat & sell both, but this is still good info to have.

After decades of being maligned for its saturated fat, beef has made a comeback with nutritionists, with recent research showing that fat doesn’t increase the risk of heart disease as previously thought .

But beef has another opponent to contend with, and it’s been here for centuries: bison .

Similar to beef both nutritionally and in terms of flavor, buffalo meat is an alternative to the cow (incidentally, “bison” is technically the correct term for the animal, but it’s come to be used interchangeably with “buffalo”).

Both bison and beef can be part of a healthy diet . But if you had to pick one big animal to take a bite out of, which one should you choose?

We compared beef and buffalo in every important category to determine the alpha protein on the range.

Is Bison Better than Beef?

	BISON	BEEF
Nutrition (4 oz serving)*	130 calories 25g protein 3g fat 0g carbs	140 calories 25g protein 4g fat 0g carbs
Safety	Never administered antibiotics or hormones	Often administered antibiotics and hormones (unless USDA Organic)
Environmental Impact	Low carbon emissions, helps preserve grasslands	High carbon emissions, depletes grasslands
Treatment of animals	Allowed to graze freely most of the time	Usually raised in feedlots (unless marked “free-range” on label)
Taste	Drier and sweeter than beef	Drier and leaner than conventional beef if grass-fed
Cost	More expensive	Less expensive

*There are many cuts of both bison and beef available. To equate them as closely as possible, we chose top sirloin—a very lean cut preferred by athletes—for the nutrition facts part of the table. Also, as bison is mainly raised on pasture, we went with grass-fed beef in the example to match it. In other words, the table compares buffalo to the very best the beef world has to offer. More commonly found conventional beef would have approximately 230 calories, 23g protein, and 15g fat per four-ounce serving.

WINNER: Bison

Why Bison Wins (By A Horn)

Buffalo Meat is Better Quality

Across all cuts, buffalo meat is lower in calories and fat than beef is, and higher in protein. A three to four-ounce serving of bison ribeye has 177 calories, 6 grams fat, and 30 grams protein compared to a typical beef ribeye, which contains 265 calories, 17 grams fat, and 27 grams protein. According to the USDA, bison burgers have 152 calories and 7 grams fat, which is less than even a 90% lean beef burger (184 calories and 10 grams fat) and a 93% lean turkey burger (176 calories and 10 grams fat). Bison offers more omega-3 fats than beef, and a better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.

Bison doesn’t give up any micronutrition to beef either. It’s higher in B vitamins than beef—critical nutrients for boosting energy levels, memory, and mood —as well as copper, potassium, and zinc . Reader’s Digest even recommended it as one of the best sources of iron for pregnant women, who tend to be anemic more than men due to menstruation.

Research supports bison as being heart-healthier too. A study published in Nutrition Research in 2013 compared the effects of consuming bison versus beef. Ten healthy men ate 12 ounces of either beef or bison per day, six days per week, for seven weeks. Then, after a 30-day “washout” to clear their systems, the bison-eaters switched to beef and vice versa for another seven weeks. Researchers concluded that “in terms of vascular health, bison meat appears to provide a healthier alternative to red meat.” In fact, after a single beef meal, harmful oxidized LDL cholesterol levels were elevated. The same changes did not occur after eating buffalo.

If you’re concerned about how your meat was raised (and you should be), bison is the safer choice every time. “All bison spend the majority of their life grazing on pasture,” says Dave Carter, Executive Director of the National Bison Association, a non-profit organization of bison producers.

I thought someone may enjoy this article... so here is a link to the whole thing https://www.onnit.com/academy/bison-vs-beef/