The cold and flu season is here! When you’re feeling under the weather or want to look after your health, is there anything better than a bowl of bone warming, immune boosting chicken soup? This is chicken soup but with a twist! Firstly, I must admit that it’s not my original recipe, but after discovering this soup a few years ago, it’s now a family favourite for anyone coming down with the sniffles and its so very easy to make as everything just gets chopped and thrown together in the pot. Add cooked rice noodles the end to make a substantial meal.
So what is the secret ingredient I hear you say? Goji berries!!! In China the Goji berry is used a little differently to the way we might use them, most often in savoury dishes such as soups and as a tea. The oldest Chinese herb book, the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, written in 200BC, regarded the goji berry as a “top grade herb” believed to have remarkable health benefits. According to TCM theory and practice, Goji berry or Wolfberry (as it is also known) is known for its ability to nourish and tonify liver and kidney, improve “ Jing” the basic element that constitute the body and maintain life activities, (Chinese Pharmacopoeia 2005). Goji berry isn’t only ingredient in this soup to give your immune system a boost, other ingredients such as onions, garlic, ginger, shitake mushrooms and chillies all have their part to play as immune system boosters, but Goji berries make an interesting and very tasty addition to the recipe. Besides, 2000 years of Ancient wisdom is hard to ignore!
Ingredients:
2 onions (any colour) – sliced
10cm piece of fresh ginger – finely sliced into matchstick size pieces
10 shitake mushrooms – sliced
2 chilli (as hot as you prefer) – sliced
3 skinless organic chicken thighs with bone or similar pieces of chicken with bone
2 stock cubes ( organic ,msg, preservative free if possible)
2 litres of boiling water – can replace stock cubes and water with same quantity of organic stock if preferred)
1 ½ cups of dried goji berries – soak goji berries in 2 cups of fresh water to reconstitute.
10 cloves of garlic finely chopped
Optional – chopped coriander or parsley and extra chilli if you like it hot!
Method:
This is the easy part! Just bung everything in the pot!
- Place onions, ginger , mushrooms, chillies, chicken, stock cubes and boiling water into a large pot.
- Bring to the boil and then simmer for 1.5 hours with lid on ( until chicken is falling off the bone)
- Take off heat, remove chicken and flake, then return meat to pot and add drained goji berries and chopped garlic to hot soup.
- To make it a meal you can add cooked rice or rice noodles
Serves 2-4
I hope you enjoy my Immune Boosting Chicken Soup! Let me know and tag me on socials @dianarobsonnaturopathy
If you would like some more tips on boosting your immune system, read my blog here.