When sick, I have always leaned towards brothy soups, either chicken or beef based. I like to augment simple ramen soups with some canned chicken, hominy, green chili powder, and chopped cilantro. For beverages, I use hot decaffeinated tea, diet ginger ale or diet 7-Up.
Then there's the big guns, for use when I have severe respiratory illness, fluid in the lungs, sinus drainage, fever, etc.
𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐨 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐢 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐩
1 32oz package Owens Breakfast Sausage, Hot
18 Poblano Peppers, tops removed, seeded and cored, chopped into 1 inch pieces
1 large White Onion, cut into quarters
6 Serrano Peppers, chopped into coarse pieces
3 bundles Cilantro leaves, chopped
2 tbs Chicken Broth Concentrate (I generally use Tones paste)
2 cups Instant Potato Flakes
4 cups frozen corn, heated and drained
1 cup Heavy Cream
Tortilla chips
Shredded cheese (Jack, cheddar, or a mix)
Sour Cream
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Slice the Owen's sausage into eight sections, flatten into patties, and fry in a non-stick frypan; brown sufficiently to achieve a crust on both sides. Place patties on paper towels to drain grease; set aside.
In an 8-Qt stew pot, place the chopped cilantro, onions, and peppers. (Warning: do not touch your eyes. Pepper juice will burn you!) Add enough water to the pot where you can see it just below the level of the peppers. Simmer with a tilted lid on medium heat until the vegetables cook down and become soft, perhaps an hour to an hour and a half. (While cooking, beware of pepper fumes from the steam. It can be intense, especially at first.) Add chicken broth concentrate; stir through. Remove from heat.
In batches, ladle the hot mixture into the hopper of a blender, no more than two thirds full per batch. (Rubber blender lids typically have a detachable clear cap in the center; remove this to allow steam to escape during blending. Protect yourself from explosive splashback when starting/stopping the blender by using a wad of paper towels over the lid opening. Be very careful! Hot liquid is caustic!) Puree each batch, starting on a lower blender speed and increasing to a higher speed, perhaps a minute per batch. While blending, add a little of the Instant Potato Flakes per batch; this lends body to the soup. Pour each blended batch of soup into a wire strainer, held over a container large enough to receive the whole batch of soup. The strainer will catch little green flecks, the skin of the peppers which has come off during the cooking/blending process. Gently tap the strainer against the top of the container to get the soup to pass through, while catching the skins. Discard the skins in the sink, and rinse the strainer between batches. (If the skins are left in, the soup will be bitter.)
Typically, about eight blending batches will process all of the soup, with potato flakes blended in. To be thorough, I strain the soup a second time, pouring it through the strainer back into the 8-Qt stew pot. This helps catch any remaining skins that got through the first time. The soup should be smooth, and dark green. Add the hot, drained corn kernels to the soup, as well as the cup of heavy cream. Crumble the fried sausage patties into the soup, and stir through.
Ladle into bowls over crumbled tortilla chips; top with shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream, if desired. (The sour cream functions as a palliative, if one finds the soup too spicy. Stirred through, it tones down the heat. I don't use any myself, but my best friend likes it that way.) Poblano soup is not only delicious, but has a therapeutic effect on congestion and sore throats, and the same overall benefits as chicken soup.
Enjoy!
