Dr.rennarad's cold cure chicken soup

16 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
1 Stewing chicken (abt 4 lbs), preferably whole (*)
3 larges Onions, peeled and halved
1 large Sweet potato, peeled and halved
3 Parsnips, peeled and halved
2 Turnips, peeled and halved
12 larges Carrots, peeled and halved,
(2 lbs)
6 Celery stalks, halved
1 Bunch Parsley, trimmed of stems
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Directions

Put chicken in a very large pot and add water to cover. Bring to a boil and add the root vegetables. Simmer for 1 hour. Add the celery and parsley and simmer 90 minutes, or until the vegetables are very soft. Remove the chicken (reserving for another purpose). Drain the vegetables into a colander, saving all the broth. In a food processor, puree the vegetables. Return the puree to the broth.

Skim off the fat before serving. (To make fat removal easy, chill the soup, skim and then reheat to serve. Add matzoh balls if you like. Makes about 16 cups.

(*) A stewing chicken, sometimes marked "hen", makes the best soup.

It's often in the supermarket's frozen poultry section. If you can't find one substitute a roasting chicken, or as a last resort, a fryer.

NOTE: Leave the chicken whole and vegetables in large chunks to make them easier to separate after cooking.

THE DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION: Freeze the soup in small containers and use it when a cold strikes.

THE ACTUAL THERAPEUTIC AGENT? Dr. Renard suspects the ingredients, after prolonged cooking interact to boost the cold-fighting effect.

Tests made at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha found that the soup blocked the movement of inflammatory white cells (neutrophils) in lab tests. That's important because cold symptoms - coughs, congestion, malaise - often are dut to inflammation produced when neutrophils migrate to the bronchial tubes and accumulate there.

Chicken soup seems to prevent this. And the soup worked even when diluted 200 times. "This may explain why even one bowl of chicken soup helps stop symptoms," Rennard says.

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