Chicken soup for the soul – GAPS protocol soup
It’s the month of January and I live in Canada. For many of us Canadians, January can be a difficult time. You wake up for work and it’s dark, and by supper time it’s dark again. The days are cold and dry and often stormy. There’s a bite to the air and maybe you even feel it in your bones. This is when, for some, depression can start to hit. I know it certainly did for me. I always dreaded winter. It always felt like after Christmas was over, the sinking feeling of depression would wrap itself around me and not let go until every drop of snow was melted in the spring.
If this is you, firstly I know how you feel and I have been there. I’ve seen some very dark days. This is one of the many reasons I chose to begin the GAPS diet. The creator, Dr. Natasha Campbell Mcbride provides a natural treatment for depression among many other psychological issues in her book Gut and psychology syndrome. I found it incredibly interesting to read in her book that a big percentage of our serotonin and dopamine actually are created in the gut. I always thought there was something wrong with my brain and that’s why I was depressed. Truthfully there was something wrong in my gut! A gut filled with toxins is not able to properly produce serotonin and dopamine. This is just ONE way our gut contributes to our mood.
Since being on the GAPS diet I have found myself happier then I’ve been in a very very long time! I truly enjoy my cold and snowy January days going skating and sledding and building snowmen with my kids. I don’t even mind shovelling the driveway or going for frosty walks. No pills or side effects, just using food as medicine- this chicken soup for example!
If you are interested in learning more about the GAPS protocol, click HERE.
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The Soup
This chicken soup isn’t only a remedy for a cold or the flu. The soups we make for the GAPS diet contain all of the necessary nutrients for your gut lining to rebuild itself from quality materials and to heal and seal all the holes in the gut wall (the so-called ‘leaky gut’). Properly prepared meat stock, which is what we make our soups with, is full of vitamins, minerals, amino acids and various other nutrients in a very bio-available form, but most importantly it is rich in collagen, elastin, proteoglycans, glycoproteins, hyaluronic acid and other molecules which form the connective tissue of all animals (including humans). A lot of big words. But in short, our gut lining needs to repair. Like a brick wall would be repaired with bricks and mortar, our body needs specific building blocks to repair itself. That’s what properly GAPS soup provide us with.
How to Make it
It is quite a simple process to make the chicken stock (and no we are not talking about bone broth here) to use as the base for our chicken soup. You can either choose to use a whole chicken or you can use backbones, wings, drumsticks, or thighs, and add in necks, and feet. Meat that is close to the bone is best, and you need those bones in there too!
You add your chicken to a pot, cover it with water and bring to a boil. This is where you remove any scum that may rise to the surface of your cooking water. Then you bring to a very low simmer and cover with a lid. Allow to simmer for 1.5-2 hours. You can choose to add vegetables in this to cook with your meat, or just leave it plain. I like to leave it plain, let it cool enough to handle my chicken, then pull all the meat off the bones. I put all my skin in a blender and puree it with a bit of my stock and add it back into my soup to make it creamy. Then I add the carrots, onions, celery, salt and spices or fresh herbs and simmer for 20 minutes. After that, I add the chicken and the green peas and let cook for 2-3 minutes. Then I serve with some cultured cream!
Chicken Soup for the Soul
Equipment
- 1 Large pot
Ingredients
- 1 Whole chicken, chicken pieces, or whole chicken with the breasts removed *see notes
- Just enough water to cover the chicken in the pot
- 4-6 Carrots, diced
- 1 Large white onion, diced
- 4 Celery stalks, chopped
- 1 Tbs Poultry seasoning, dried or fresh ( mixture of sage, thyme marjoram and rosemary)
- 1 Cup Fresh or frozen green peas
Instructions
- The first step is to prepare your chicken. See notes on best pieces to use.* I like to rinse off my chicken before adding to my pot. Then I add just enough water to cover all of the chicken. You don't want too much, or your soup will have a "watered down" flavour.
- Bring your cooking water to a boil.
- Remove any scum that rises to the surface.
- Cover and let reduce to a very low simmer for 1.5- 2 hours.
- Let cool enough to handle your chicken. Remove the chicken from your pot and take all of the meat off the bones. See notes on how to use up the skin and soft tissue.
- Now you can add in your diced carrots and onions as well as your celery, if using. You can also add your dried or fresh herbs (see notes for GAPS into instructions). Let simmer on low for 20 minutes.
- Now you can add in your chicken and your fresh or frozen peas.
- Serve and enjoy!