The Cure for the Flu (and New Years Eve)

Like everyone else, we've been to a lot of parties on New Years Eve, some of them fabulous, most of them a drag. I don't know how old you have to be in order not to have expectations on New Years Eve. It seems to me one of those occasions which dooms even eighty-year-olds to feel like teenage outsiders. One of the best New Years Eves we've ever had found both Marge and I with the flu. The weather was miserable, one of those starless winter nights on Cape Cod with a hard freezing rain blowing sideways from the Northeast. We had a party to go to...but neither of us felt festive, or social, or even like getting dressed. We spent the entire evening bundled up on the living room couch, drinking champagne and watching the DVD of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring Alec Guiness.

Between episodes, we had this soup, which in our house we refer to as The Cure and we have it—with a bottle of champagne—whenever one of us gets a cold or the flu. (Works nicely for a hangover, too.) Although centuries of grandmas have touted its healing properties, chicken soup has been studied, and proven, by modern medical experts to contain amino acids chemically resembling the drug acetylcysteine, prescribed for bronchitis and other respiratory problems. Spices like garlic, and even the soup’s wonderful fragrant steam, make breathing easier. And if this isn’t enough, just drinking it with champagne will help you forget your misery.

1 chicken cut up: You can also use chicken parts, especially if you have a strong preference for dark or light meat. We like dark meat and often use a package of thighs or drum sticks instead of a whole chicken. You can also use gizzards and backs. You can use any kind of chicken including roasting chickens, fryers, old hens. The older and bigger the chicken, the longer it must cook.

8 cups of water.

1 tablespoon of dry white wine or white vermouth. The alcohol will help leach the calcium from the bones to make the broth even more nutritious.

Optional: 2 Chicken bouillon cubes

Optional: 1 teaspoon salt (and adjust according to taste and diet requirements).

2 teaspoons of turmeric. Very important for that rich yellow color!

3 carrots cut in rounds. All these vegetable quantities are arbitrary. Use more or less according to what you have in the garden or refrigerator.

2 stalks of celery, chopped. If it has leaves, include them.

2 big onions roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, roughly minced

Optional, 2 parsnips, cut in rounds

Parsley, minced. No amount is too much. When we have it in abundance in the garden I’ll use as much as a big curly handful.

Dill, minced. Same amount as parsley above.

2 Bay leaves, whole.

Optional: 1 cup of kale, chopped, or ½ pound of green beans. This usually depends on what we have in the garden (or the freezer from the previous summer).

Optional: 1 cup whole wheat noodles -or- ½ cup wild rice.

Cut up the chicken, and place it (or the chicken parts) in a large soup pot and add around 8 cups of water for a three-pound chicken. Add the wine immediately. Add salt. Some cooks throw in chicken bouillon cubes to make the broth stronger. If you do that, go easy on the salt.

Add the tumeric. Add the vegetables. Add the herbs.

Bring to a boil and then turn down to a full simmer and cover it. 


Allow to simmer for two hours.

If you are using wild rice, add it after one hour.

If you are using green vegetables, add them after 1 and a ½ hours.

If you are using whole wheat noodles, add them and 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Five minutes before, taste it and adjust for salt.

Enjoy it with ice cold champagne and a good bread.