I’m cooking once a week for a friend whose family is on a No-gluten, No-sugar, No-soy diet, All-organic diet. Their little 4 yr old daughter has cancer. They are going in this diet to try to prolong her life as much as possible. Sugar feeds cancer, and the Soy interferes with her medication. Fermented soy (soy sauce) is ok, so I’m saved by Organic Tamari! Agave is a sugar derived from a cactus plant, and is processed differently than regular sugar in the body, so we can use that. I’ll be posting recipes – I’m sure there are many other cancer patients on a similar diet. This week, I chose one of the most nourishing, warming dishes to prepare. While soup is easy to prepare, there are multiple steps, including cleaning the chicken by boiling it for 5 minutes.
Healthy Chinese Chicken Soup
Ingredients
- 1 3-lb organic chicken, or 3lbs of chicken pieces
- 5 stalks green onion, cut into 3" pieces
- 2" piece of ginger, cut into 4 "coins"
- 2 carrots, cut into large chunks
- 2 stalks celery, cut into large chunks
- salt
Instructions
- Using very sharp, heavy cleaver, cut up the chicken into as many 2"-3" pieces as you can. The smaller the pieces, the more flavor will be extracted into the soup.
- Boil 1 quart of water in a large stockpot. Once the water boils, add the the chicken pieces. Boil for 5 minutes. Have a large strainer ready at the sink - and dump the entire stockpot into the strainer. The cloudy and scummy water will go down the drain. Wash your stockpot, getting rid of any scum that clings to sides. Rinse the chicken pieces and return to the stockpot. Refill stockpot with 1 1/2 quarts cold water.
- Add rest of the ingredients to stockpot. Bring to barely a boil and immediately turn down the heat to low. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, never letting the stock bubble and boil. Periodically check the stockpot and remove any scum on surface. Strain, reserving stock. Congratulations, you've just made a very clean and healthy stock! Return stock to the stockpot.
- Add 1 tsp salt. Taste, adjust salt as needed. Strain the soup, discard ginger and green onion. Using your fingers, shred the chicken meat and return the chicken and vegetables to the stockpot
Did you try this recipe? Please leave a star rating in the recipe card below and leave a review in the comment section! I always appreciate your feedback and I know other readers do, too!
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I’ve tried this recipe once and am at this moment making it again! It’s the best chicken soup I’ve tried to make. We often get into stuffing every veggie and flavouring into chicken soup. We think it’s hardy because it’s got lots of things in it. But this presents a clean clear soup with subtle flavour. I soaked up some rice noodles last time for the starch and it was so much fun to eat. Tuck a bib under your chin and perhaps put you glasses away while you eat it. Thank you for this lovely soup.
Hi Jaden,
I happen to stumble on your blog and found this Healthy Chinese Chicken Soup recipe which is quite similar to what I try to cook for my 21-month old daughter at least once a week. I am a first time mother and trying to adopt a low or preferably no salt diet for my child.
I am sorry to hear about your friend’s child battling with cancer and I hope she has fully recovered by now as I realised it is more than 3 years since you posted this recipe.
I would like to share my version of the recipe by using anchovies stock and other veggies which I use (in addition to carrot, celery and onion in yours) are butternut, brocolli and corns. I will sometimes swap the soup base by using beef stock and I like to call my concoction “goodness in one bowl”!
Ching Ching
Singapore
i love Chicken Soup it is so yummy.
Your nice trying to help your friend and her little one. I hope the kid bounces back.
Hi Tania,
If you haven’t found the recipes for seafood congee, you may like to visit my website because I have a couple of seafood congee.
They may not be the same as the one you had in Toronto. But I hope you will find them useful.
The recipe are at http://www.homemade-chinese-soups.com/seafood-porridge-recipes.html
Hi
I am looking for a simple but taste seafood congee recipe. I was in Toronto recently and had my first taste of it and now I am hooked. I have looked on-line, but so far none of them seem to be what I want. Can anyone help me with this.
Thanks