Fish Bone Broth for Choya

The man found time to boil up fish bone broth for his darling Choya. We had a frozen snapper head and some bones, but they weren't enough to boil down into bone broth. Went to the wet market to buy $5 worth of mixed fish bones to add to the pot. Didn't want to get another fish head. Heads are super pungent. If the concoction is too fishy, and the fussy dog might reject it. 

We don't do beef bone broth because we don't have a pressure cooker. To boil it down to collagen and such would take too long. Not too practical for us. So doing a fish bone broth would be easier. A huge pot would boil down to two bowls. Something like three liters of water to about 550ml of bone broth. 

I told the man that it was a lot of effort. The dog doesn't actually drink the bone broth like she does goat milk. I use it to add to her food to make it a little wet and as a healthy form of supplement/vitamins. The bone broth we usually buy are top quality, and that quantity is more than enough for the dog's needs. Boiling it up at home works, but it's too much effort for too little output. The man still wanted to do it. Oof. Okaaaaayy.

Slow-simmered fish bone broth is usually ready in about three hours. The man used a five-liter giant pot and extracted 1.5 liters of broth. A bottle came out to the fridge and the rest went into the freezer. The broth in the fridge would solidify into a jelly like substance in 12 hours, and that jelly tells us that we've got it right. That jelly, is pure collagen. Mmmmm. That pungent fishy smell was AWESOME. 

The broth is a hit with the dog. She had her first taste of it at dinner after school. The naughty girl often skips lunch in school (dunno why), and is hungry by 5pm when she comes home. She knows how to come ask me for food. Not all dogs are driven by hunger. Yet no dog will willingly starve itself. Choya eats only when she's hungry, and she'll eat what she deems to be sufficient to ease the hunger. She won't finish a portion I set out; she decides on how much she wants to eat. It's only after a year that I finally learn her moods and cues, and begin to average out her portions. She's a small eater. Today, she wolfed down this particular meal because the fish bone broth was ridiculously appetizing. That plus hunger combined, I managed to con her to eat 15% more than her usual portion. 

The gorgeous fine bouncy gelatin of bone broth after it cools in the fridge.