“Use everything.”

Somewhere between the traditional kitchen and a modern grocery store, many of us have forgotten just how much wisdom backs those two simple words.

For generations, preparing an animal meant finding a purpose for more than just the cuts that now tend to make it into the butcher’s case. Bones were transformed into broth, fat was rendered to be used for cooking, and organs were prepared in many ways. The tougher pieces were given the time to become tender. While these parts of the animal have never been glamorized, they could easily become one of the most flavorful parts of the meal.

This way of thinking extends into traditional cuisines all over the world. In Korean kitchens, bones have been used to make rich and milky broths, which can be eaten as standalone meals or as the foundation for something else.

A Lesson in Looking at Food Differently

Traditional food was often simple because it had to be. Wasting food wasn’t an option, so cooks found ways to make use of parts that might otherwise have been overlooked. Bones weren’t simply leftovers; they could become something useful, flavorful, and entirely different from the cut they came from.

Let’s have a look at Korean cuisine, where long-cooked bone broths are often served.

Preparations such as seolleongtang and gomtang rely on extended cooking to draw out flavor and gelatinous components from bones. This results in a broth that looks opaque and creamy rather than clear. It is typically served in a relatively simple manner, which allows diners to season it to suit their own taste preferences.

This is not the same as simply opening a carton of heavily seasoned stock and letting the manufacturer decide what your dinner should taste like.

There is something refreshing about having a broth that doesn’t decide the meal for you.

Imagine that you’ve just come home from a long day. You didn’t make an elaborate dinner plan. You open the fridge to find that there is leftover rice, a few vegetables that are going to go off, and maybe some chicken from the fridge. Instead of creating an entire meal from scratch, you can simply heat a pot of broth to bring all those scattered ingredients together.

This approach can make cooking feel less like following a recipe and more like knowing your way around the kitchen. That ability to make something useful out of what is already in the kitchen is part of what drew Reclamation Foods’ founder back to this way of thinking.

She moved away from the world of tech and into a small town in rural Georgia. This is where she apprenticed on a regenerative livestock farm before eventually deciding to commit to the farm full-time to lead its e-commerce business.

Working closely with livestock farmers gave her a completely different view of the food system.

She saw firsthand how much effort goes into raising animals and how difficult it can be for regional farms to build viable food systems. She also noticed how many parts of the animal remained undervalued despite the land, labor, and resources that had gone into producing them.

This is what eventually led her back to the culinary traditions that she had grown up around. Korean food offered a familiar reminder that animals do not need to be separated into two categories: valuable parts and less valuable parts.

And so, Reclamation Foods was created.

The Blank Canvas in Your Pantry

Instead of trying to reinvent the bone broth to be the latest wellness discovery, Reclamation Foods takes a more traditional approach. The Korean-style bone broth is made using just two simple ingredients: bones and water.

There is no added salt, seasoning, preservatives, or flavoring. This might sound like a strange omission, but so many foods are designed to arrive already finished. Here, the simplicity is intentional.

The broth can be seasoned and sipped on its own; however, it can also become a part of something completely different. This broth can be used in soups and stews, can be added to grains, incorporated into sauces, and can be used in any situation where a cook might reach for either water or stock.

The texture is also a key factor. When bone broth is chilled, it becomes jiggly and gelatinous rather than completely liquid. This is due in part to gelatin formed as collagen breaks down during the cooking process. The Korean-style preparation also produces a milky, opaque broth instead of a clean appearance that is associated with many conventional stocks.

• Beef Bone Broth: made from 100% grass-fed beef bones.
• Pork Bone Broth: made from pasture-raised pork bones.
• Chicken Bone Broth: made from pasture-raised chicken bones and the newest addition to the range.

The choice to leave each option’s seasoning ensures that the cook can decide where the broth goes and what it becomes.

That versatility matters. A broth doesn’t have to mean soup.

It can be used in a pot of rice, added to a sauce for depth, folded into a noodle dish, or simply enjoyed on its own. For those who are willing to experiment a little, applications outside of traditional savory uses could include lattes and cocktails.

And suddenly a jar of bone broth can serve as a blank canvas.

The Things We Forget to Keep

Bone broth is something that is now commonly associated with modern wellness culture; however, the food itself has been around for many years. Research has looked at its nutritional composition. A study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism examined several commercially available bone broths and found considerable variation in their amino acid profiles, an important reminder that one bone broth cannot necessarily stand in for another nutritionally.

Bone broth is not a standardized nutritional category. There are many things that can influence the finished product, such as preparation methods, cooking time, ingredients, and the bones that are used.

Reclamation Foods approaches bone broth as a traditional food with a long culinary history rather than something that needs to be surrounded by exaggerated wellness claims.

For Reclamation Foods, bone broth is about finding value in what might otherwise be overlooked and bringing old traditions into modern kitchens. They work with regional farmers, have received recognition from the Good Food Awards and Slow Food NYC, and their growing range shows that the idea has room to expand.

Use everything.

Maybe that is what makes the idea feel so relevant now. The leftover rice, the vegetables that need to be used, the broth warming in the pot, none of them need to become something elaborate. They simply need to be given another chance to become part of the meal.

Sometimes, using food well isn’t about having more. It’s about learning to see more in what is already there.