Bernard O'Shea: I tried Gwyneth Paltrow's recipe for bone broth and it did not go well

Bernard O'Shea: taking a look at bone broth to deal with ongoing issues. Photograph Moya Nolan

You'll probably never hear this question at your following fundraising table quiz: What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Salma Hayek and Shailene Woodley all have in common? They all are exponents for the bone broth. How did you not know that? Any idea?

Bone broth has become increasingly popular in recent years, with many claiming it offers a range of health benefits. It can also force you to leave your house for a few hours!

One of the most significant supposed benefits of bone broth is that it benefits your joints, skin, and gut health. It is also reported to boost digestion, elevate bone density and reduce osteoporosis risk. That is a lot of health box-ticking for me. In the last few years, my bones have begun to creak in the morning, and I won't get into too many details about how bad my digestion and IBS have become. 

But the most agreed-upon benefit across medical circles is that it's rich in collagen. Collagen helps to maintain the strength and integrity of bones, cartilage, and skin. It also contains high concentrations of glycine and proline amino acids that aid in producing white blood cells that can help improve the immune system.

Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand Goop has been extolling the benefits of bone broth for years. She dubs it a "healer for your gut". She provides several recipes on her website to support its celebrated health properties. It's here that I found the blueprint for my potential culinary catastrophe.

It wasn't the first time there was an O'Shea-based disaster involving bone-based liquids. Years ago, when my father was alive, he pestered my mother, who was - and still is - a fantastic cook, to make him "Dingle pies". He continued about these "amazing" pies dipped into a soup made with lamb bones. He told anyone that would listen that they would buy them when the Dingle races were on when he was a child, and he's never tasted anything like them since. 

Bernard O'Shea and writing assistant Jingles, who could not be reached for comment on the matter of bone broth.

My mother eventually tried to make them. I can vividly remember her saying to my father that she didn't know how to make lamb bone soup (who does?). Remember, this was long before the internet and mountains of weekly published cookbooks. My sisters and I sat around the table to watch him eat the final product. We all thought he wouldn't dip the pies into what looked like a watery lamb Vaseline stew, but he did. He ate them but didn't ask for them again. Memories always taste better. 

Interestingly enough, I found the recipe on the Irish Examiner's website.

However, I decided to make my broth from a recipe based on one I found on Goop named Chicken Bone Broth. It lays out a detailed recipe that uses "chicken backs" (still not sure what that is) and "chicken feet". I'm not squeamish and can be a culinary adventurist, but I wasn't ready to cook feet. So I put a chicken into hot water for a few hours. The recipe calls for you to add vegetables, whole peppercorns, bay leaf, and sea salt after an hour. 

I had none of those ingredients, so I threw a few spoons of Bisto. I skimmed the foam from the top in the first 10-15 minutes of boiling. I then reduced the heat and simmered for what seemed like an eternity. I started the recipe at 9am, and by the time I went to pick up the kids at 3 pm, the chicken in the pot was still raw. The ingredients also called for a "1/2 cup of Further Food collagen powder". I did my shopping that week in Lidl. I saw screwdrivers, laundry baskets and garden hose fittings, but I didn't see their promotion on collagen powder. So I just threw in another spoon of Bisto.

That night after the kids had fallen asleep, it still wasn't cooked. The next day I slowly boiled that chicken for ten hours. It wasn't patience that kept me going; I just forgot about it. When I remembered, the poor chicken was burnt to a crisp, and the arse of the pot was ruined. It took hours for the smell of burnt chicken and Bisto to disappear. My wife and kids kept asking all day, "What's that smell?" and when I eventually owned up, my wife threw her eyes to the moist chicken steamed ceiling and said, "Why didn't you just buy collagen supplements, you idiot". 

In hindsight, I should have realised that bone broth was not worth the effort. And now, with the internet at our fingertips, ordering bone broth powder is just a few clicks away. But sometimes, it only takes one cook to spoil the broth.