Peace and Broth reign at my house.

I don't separate the bones and cartilage of chicken, beef, pork. It all goes in the pot with water and (some) vinegar.

With a handful of eggshells for more minerals!

Yes, it tastes different every time,

A DIFFERENT KIND OF WONDERFUL!

Anecdotally and per the GAPS diet, chicken broth seems to be easier to digest if your gut is compromised (IBS, GERD, etc). However, chicken broth undoubtedly has an inferior O3/6 ratio. The bones are also smaller and weaker, so you'd be getting less marrow/minerals/connective tissue.

In summary: eat chicken broth to heal your gut (if needed). Favor beef broth otherwise.

In terms of preparation, I don't think the crockpot can be beaten for both quality and ease of use. Cooking time seems to be the most important factor for a good bone broth- I like to go 7 hours minimum up to 21 hours on the low setting.

Paul Jaminet also has some good stuff on bone broths:

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=1704
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=4775

What about pork? I like them both, but beef broth always tastes more substantial to me.

Don't forget lamb bones, if you can get them.

I agree that turkey broth is really tasty. I just made broth with the Thanksgiving carcass, including the neck and organs. SO rich and delicious, thoroughly gelatinous with all the good stuff.

That being said, I really like beef bone broth. Try adding a bunch of different herbs or lots of garlic so you're not getting the straight-forward beefiness issue. I highly recommend Latest in Paleo's Pho recipe: http://www.latestinpaleo.com/blog/2011/3/22/latest-in-paleo-pho-recipe-vietnamese-beef-soup.html

I prefer the taste of beef broth (and it's probably healthier), but chicken broth smells a hell of a lot better cooking. I also love lamb broth and turkey broth. I make broth with whatever bones I have on hand.

Also, I love adding a head of garlic into the pot when I make any types of broth.

I have one new element to add in addition to the comments I've made about other answers.

On Thanksgiving weekend, I reheated a beef/turkey stew. Once it reached a nice simmer, I dropped in a portion of shrimp-in-shell. I also put in some butter to melt.

I must say, the shrimp added wonderful flavor to the overall stew and the shrimp were the best I've ever made at home. The shrimp tasted of both the butter and the stew yet the shrimp flavor came through just fine. The next day, the remaining stew had an enhanced flavor including shrimp with all the other flavors.

I will do that again!

i prefer the taste of turkey broth to chicken and the necks are so inexpensive.

It's a tie. I love both. :)

For fowl, I usually roast the thing and then after removing legs and wings, I strip the carcass of meat into a large Pyrex. The left over bones + breast cartilage go into a stock pot to be boiled down.

For beef (well, really bison) I get marrow and oxtail and sometimes tendons and boil them away.

After a few hours of simmering and several refills of water when the water goes down by 1/4, I let the thing cool for a few hours, then fish out the bones or run it through a strainer into jars for storage for later, or another pot to start a soup.

For soup, it's the usual trinity: celery, onion, carrot sauteed with some garlic, then maybe add parsnips and then the broth/stock, bay leaf or two, salt, pepper, meat, etc. Near the end, throw in some spinach, parsley or cilantro, etc. Serve with some lemon juice and maybe Tabasco.

I make both and like to drink/cook with both. I make chicken broth more often because I roast a whole chicken every couple of weeks so I have the bones available more often. I just take all the bones from one whole chicken, put them in my small crockpot, cover with water, add some ACV, and cook on low for 24 hours. I strain the broth off and refill the crockpot with water one more time cooking again for 24 hours.

I save all my beef and pork bones together--but most of them are beef and when I have enough I roast up a beef knuckle and put that with all the other bones into a crockpot, cover with water, add some ACV, and cook on low for 24 hours. I strain the broth off and refill the crockpot with water 2-3 more times cooking each time for 24 hours (basically, I stop reusing the bones when the broth stops gelling).

I also make turkey broth after roasting a turkey. I do that on the stove top because I have to use my big stock pot to hold the turkey carcass. I make it the same way I make the chicken broth cooking it on the stove to on low (covered, of course).

I used to add veggies to my broth, but I've found I prefer the flavor without anything else added.

I know the beef broth is healthier because of the n3/n6, and it's way more gelatinous but I like the taste of chicken broth better. It would help if beef broth didn't stink up my house for days :(

Which ever way you choose to go, I always prefer to augment my broths with a ready supply of collagen-laden parts. For chicken broth, a frozen chicken's foot or two will make it into the pot, and for beef broth, marrow bones slices and possibly half a pig's trotter as well. One tip that I really like is to just simmer the bones for the first 5-6-however many hours, and then add the vegetables for the last hour or so, so that they don't soak up too much precious broth.

For pork broth, which I heart most of all, take a few pounds of pork bones and a trotter, and boil them for about half an hour. Once most of the blood and scum have been leached out, drain the bones, scrub off any congealing, wash the pot, put the bones back in the pot and refill with water. Bring to a simmer for 6 hours. Off to the side, fry up some garlic, ginger, and onions til almost black (I use lard for this), then strain and add to the pot. Simmer for another hour. This is basically a half step away from ramen broth. Strain and enjoy.

After reading this and several other posts on bone broths, I made both of these recently.

So far, the beef broth came out better. I think. It turned to jello in the fridge and was not overly "beefy" like I thought it might be. I drank half of what I made and used the other half as a base to go along with a chuck roast. Good stuff.

For the chicken broth I used a whole chicken carcass along with the skin and some bits of meat, cooked on low in the crock pot for 24 hours. For whatever reason it just didn't gel up. I don't know if I added too much water or what happened, but I drank it anyway. It looked and tasted like chicken soup, it just wasn't very gelatinous. I will try it again the next time I have chicken.

I've also had whole red snapper twice in the past two weeks and have saved the carcasses from both fish, and am thinking about attempting a fish stock. I just don't know what I could use it for yet, as the thought of drinking it straight doesn't sound as appealing to me as the others.

I personally like both- just for different things. Chicken broth is my all purpose one for recipes quick soups. It goes with nearly anything. I like a quick cup of chicken broth sometimes as a snack or a way to warm up. Turkey fits here, too

However a big pot of beef soup is so good with cabbage, green beans, etc- it more of a meal soup instead of a snack or a side dish.

I'd like to make fish stock some day but have to wait until hubs is out of town long enough to make it and then clear a away the smell!

If I want a quick broth that is guaranteed full of gelatin, I go with chicken or turkey. Throw in the bones and the skin. I can take a hammer to the bones too to speed up the process easily.

Beef bones seem to take an awful lot longer to get the full nutrition out of and/or they are harder to break apart to speed up the process.

I'm a big fan of pork bones. Mostly because my butt supplier (pork that is- grin) gives me big bags full of fresh bones for free. I've never made a pork broth that didn't turn to jelly in the fridge!

I've never made beef broth because I never buy cuts of beef with bones. But, I do frequently make poultry stock. I keep a ziplock bag in the freezer into which I put onion skins and all poultry bones. Any long bones are cut in half with poultry shears to expose the marrow. When the bag is full, I add carrots, celery, and bay leaf and make stock. I used to do it the long and slow method, but I recently switched to the pressure cooker method after reading a URL that found better stock could be made that way.

I just made a huge pot of turkey broth. I used it in the WellFed Chili recipe as the broth and water substitution. It came out insanely good.

We don't do turkey "dinners" often, instead I'll quarter and butcher the bird - taking a pair of tinsnips to the bones to expose the marrow, then bring the pot to a boil, down to a simmer for 6 hours or so. On the turkey, even tinsnips won't work so I use a tenderizing hammer to literally "crush" the middle of the long bones. Makes me feel quite "Grokish".

I also take all my leftover veggie scraps, carrot-tops, old celery, onion skins and ends - they go in the pot as well.

As far as my favorite broth, mine is oxtails with lamb neckbones simmered all day. It's a broth you can eat with a fork, and it maybe costs us $3 for two gallons of stock.

One comment I add about the smell - I cook beef and chicken broths (chicken more often due to the access to roasted-chicken carcass, as many have cited), but in any case I add some onion to the pot in the very beginning, because it makes it all smell infinitely better!!

I usually add at least a half an onion at the very beginning, or as much of the top/tail and leek scraps as I can identify. The rest of the veggies and garlic (whatever parings I've put into my freezer-bag of scraps plus the garlic that's on the counter...) goes in for the last couple of hours only. But start with bones plus a half an onion and it smells great!

Oh, also, to get a chicken stock to gel, I usually have to have two roast-chicken carcasses to one pot of stock. One carcass will make it smooth, which is fine for every-day use, but not to really gel. I figure this is because beef bones are solid (and heavy!), so for the same volume you get quite a bit more content. Roast chicken scraps, in comparison, have meat and skin and much thinner and less dense bones, so it makes for less of the collagen and minerals. Remember, the chickens have to sorta-fly somehow - it's because their bones have a large proportion of air in them when compared to mammalian bones.

im not sure which is the most nutritious, but i can tell you that duck stock is by far my favourite, but i guess you can say that about just about anything made with duck.

VEAL BROTH OR YOU AREN'T A REAL COOK.

Want the health benefits? Veal bones have it. Want to knock out some amazing french bistro food and wow your friends and family that a lot of french food is paleo friendly and fantastic? Want to make everything you cook, fancy or not, plump with flavor and mouthfeel?

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO VEAL.

Oxtails are the best... they seem to add tons of gelatin to the broth and the meat is delicious when it's tender. Since I like to make my broth somewhat of a meat stock as well, I often brown a couple beef shank cuts in a pan with some ghee before throwing them in with some browned oxtails, marrow bones, and/or knuckle bones. The shank cuts add some skin and bones with marrow to the broth. I find that I always get a rich, gelatinous broth that turns totally solid when it cools.

Lamb is probably my favourite in terms of flavour, so I save the bones from chops or legs to throw in with my beef stock, but I haven't made a pure lamb broth yet... I should probably get on it.

I'm also a huge fan of turkey broth, especially since a carcass yields quite a bit of meat after a couple hours of simmering. Poultry broth doesn't gel over quite as easily, so I try to add as many chicken feet as I can into the mix.