Kate Moffat's frustration at not being able to find the perfect broth sparked a moment of inspiration, and she and husband Derek started on their journey to launch Best Bone Broth. Hotel Magazine caught up with Moffat to chat about her delicious range of broths...
Best Bones started back in 2015 when I started making Bone Broth at home. I was making it to help with my son's eczema which I believed was related to a gut health issue. It was such a process to source organic bones and then carry out the 12 – 24 hour long cooking process required to get a traditional, quality, Bone Broth. The house would smell like Bone Broth all the time and my husband would worry about the stove being left on overnight. That's when I thought "It would be great if I could just buy Bone Broth!" I looked around and there was nothing available at the time, so my husband and I found a commercial kitchen and started making it ourselves. We are real foodies, so we love having Bone Broth on hand all the time, it adds so much flavour to any recipe and when you pair that with the health benefits it's hard to beat.
We currently produce an Organic Chicken and an Organic Beef using 100% certified organic, local ingredients. Our point of difference is the simplicity and the quality. We leave out everything but the vital ingredients. Our customers don't want us adding salt for them, they can easily do that themselves. Same goes for garlic and onion, in fact, many of our customers are on specific diets which exclude various ingredients so we can cater for all by keeping it simple. It's important to us to be the best quality broth on the market and our recipe requires the highest possible ratio of bones to water. We don't skimp for profit we overdo it for quality, meaning our broth is always thick and gelatinous.
We are currently launching our new Wild Fish Broth. We have always made our own at home following successful fishing trips but we really wanted to make the health benefits of Fish Broth available to our customers. Fish Broth is a great addition and we have been enjoying having plenty on hand during the recipe development process. As with our other two products, the emphasis is on the health benefits. Limited ingredients and no added sodium. Fish broth is an excellent source of iodine - something most Kiwis are lacking as it's not found in our soil, and therefore we're not getting it from the food we grow. We also continue with our nose to tail ideology. In this case we are only using fish frames and heads which would otherwise be disposed of once the fillets have been removed.
Our Fish broth is unlike any others I have seen in that we use maximum frames and heads to get a thick gel. We use NZ Snapper frames, because of their size and feeding habits, we believe it makes the healthiest and tastiest Broth.
All our fish frames come from NZ independent fisherman all working under the quota management scheme (basically small owner operator type vessels). Everything that is caught must be landed on the wharf (except under size) so nothing is wasted. By using a product that would otherwise be discarded we are maximising this regulated resource.
We have a few ideas and goals for the business which we are working on at the moment. There are definitely products we would like to see in the market place that do not currently exist or, as is more often the case, the products are there but they are full of artificial flavours and preservatives.
We are now much more widely available - you can always find us in the organic stores like Huckleberry's, Commonsense, Naturally Organic and IE produce, as well as the Farro Fresh stores. And we have recently launched in the Foodstuffs chain and we are in selected stores nationwide - Raeward Fresh in the South Island and many of the New Worlds in the North Island. Our website always has an up to date list of where our products can be found.
