Healing Chinese Chicken Soup

Have you had a cold/flu and you tried everything.... paracetomol, oranges for vitC, hot honey & lemon with ginger, blackcurrant strepsils, white congee, and even chicken soup..... and although you not feel worse but you dont feel any better?

Well, that was me from christmas day - striken by the bug, then boxing day onwards - it was a great mission to get myself better, but at the same time you think, why is my body not better yet? why is it soo slow?  soo frustrating!

Luckily these days you can turn to the world wide web for answers - to which i found this recipe
'A Healing Soup to Ward off Cold & Flu', which was a very interesting article - and giving the mythical remedy of chicken soup bit of a boost with some scientific backing based on Chinese medici.

Anyway, I didnt want to sit around and mope, and looked at the recipe i had most of the ingredients, and it didnt look too complicated, so i thought i give it a go.... but i made adaptation in adding egg noodles, so it become our evening meal.  We both really enjoyed it, and i certainly felt the heat after gulping down the soup, which works great when the day have been wintery cold!

Afterwards - hmm.... i dont think alone it had magically healed me, but with the combination of all my preventative measure i did feel better the next day - so will bookmark it for future - just one thing left to heal - the damn tickly cough! lol

Serves 4
Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-2 red chilies, finely sliced, OR substitute 1/2 to 3/4 tsp. dried crushed chili
• 2 ” of ginger root, finely chopped
• 1/2 lb of boneless, skinless chicken, chopped into 1/2″ slices
• 5 cups chicken stock
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• A pinch of Tumeric
• 1/2 cup of sweet potato, cut into 1/4″ dice
• A head of broccoli, separated into florets
• 3 green onions, chopped finely
• Any of the Chinese herbs - Ju hua (Chrysanthamum Flowers), Yu Jin (Tumeric), Huang qi (Astragalus)

Method:

1)Heat the sesame oil in a pan and fry the garlic, chili peppers and ginger over a low heat until they become soft and fragrant. Be careful not to burn them.
2) Add the chicken pieces and stir as you seal the outside of the meat.
3) Add in the stock, soy sauce, tumeric and sweet potato and bring to the boil. Add any Chinese herbs if you are using them.
4) Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
5)Add broccoli and simmer for a further 5 minutes.
6)Add chopped green onions and serve.

Get well soon and happy cooking!