Chicken Tumeric Soup With Spinach And Chickpeas

There is always some flu or some bug going around,  especially when the rain stops and the sun comes out.  The boys caught the stomach bug and spent one weekend throwing up along with severe diarrhea and then the next week end before I could breathe a sigh of relief,  a heavy cold with fever came in. Both being asthmatic, this was not a good sign as especially my little guy spent one day fighting to catch his breath with a really bad wheeze going on.


Its hard for me as a mother, when the kids get sick they lose their appetite and you have to keep the food going in,not out. For me the best kind of food to make during sick days is soups.   Apart from my sick day rice porridge,  chicken soup is one of my favourite sick day soups to make.

I recently read that turmeric is good for colds, and discovered this turmeric broth recipe on Pinterest ( where else, hubby thinks its  a very girly app lol) . Anyway, this broth was so flavorful that  I decided to make some for dinner on one of those sick days. Worked well, it not too bulky, the chicken gave the protein part, some spinach and chickpeas went well and  I added some rice instead of noodles as rice was easier to eat than noodles for the boys.

Recipe : Chicken Tumeric Soup With Spinach And Chickpeas recipe adapted from Tumeric Broth Detox

Serves 4

1/2 of a whole chicken or 1 chicken breast, skinned.
1 small onion chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp grated ginger
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
a few black peppercorns
1 chicken stock cube (optional) or use freshly made chicken stock instead)
hand ful baby spinach or 50g frozen spinach thawed
1 cup cooked chickpeas or canned chickpeas ( water drained and washed)
juice of 1/2  lime
1/4 cup  basmathi rice
hand ful fresh coriander leaves, stems and leaves chopped separately
1 litre of water plus extra 1 cup water
salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Heat oil, add onions, and stir fry till onions go soft and translucent.  Next, add the garlic and ginger, stir fry to give off the raw smell then add the ground spices and peppercorns and finely chopped coriander stems. Stir for a minute, with a little water then add water and bring to a boil then simmer. Gently put the chicken in or chicken breast in. Simmer till the chicken is cooked through. about 30 minutes as its a small piece of chicken.

Remove the chicken, and let it cool. Then shred the meat. You can strain the stock in the pot if you like.  Now taste the stock,  I like to add an additional stock cube.

Bring the stock to a simmer,  add the additional 1 cup water, the chickpeas, the meat from the chicken and the rice. ( If you are a chilli-loving Maldivian and want to spice it up, 1/4 piece of scotch bonnet is nice in this but I made this for two sick boys ,so no chillies in for me).

Cook till the rice is cooked through.  Taste, adjust the salt and add the spinach.  Cook 1-2 minutes, add a little more water if it looks too thick, you want it soupy and loose not a bulky porridge. Add lime juice and fresh coriander leaves.  Serve warm.

I made the mistake of adding spinach too early no wonder my leaves have lost their colour. LOL.

Have a nice day!!!