Immune Boosting Soup: High Protein Sicky Soup
Whenever I feel a cold coming on, that first scratch at the back of my throat, I start craving soup. I have been making this one for years and I still make it every winter. It is warm, it is spicy enough to open your sinuses and it carries about 30 grams of protein a bowl, which turns out to matter more than most of the folklore around cold season.
I also went back through the research on every ingredient in it, and some of what I used to believe did not hold up. So this is not another list of magic immune foods. It is an immune boosting soup where I tell you which ingredients earn their place, which ones do not and, the part almost nobody mentions, how the way you cook it changes what survives in the pot.
Table of Contents-Click to Expand
- What Makes This an Immune Boosting Soup
- Garlic, and Why When You Add It Matters
- Fresh Ginger, Not Ground
- Turmeric Needs Black Pepper
- Onions, Celery and the Rest of the Base
- Why Protein Belongs in an Immune Boosting Soup
- What I Left Out, and Why
- Why Chicken Soup Helps When You Have a Cold
- How to Make It
- Storing and Freezing
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What Makes This an Immune Boosting Soup
Let me set expectations before we get to the ingredients, because I would rather you trust this page than be impressed by it.
No soup cures a cold. Most of what gets sold as immune boosting comes from supplement trials using doses you could never eat, or from lab studies on cells in a dish. When I say an ingredient here has support, I will tell you what kind of support, whether it came from people or a petri dish and whether the amount tested resembles anything you would put in a pot.
What this soup does do: it gets fluid, warmth, capsaicin and a serious amount of protein into you on a day when cooking feels like too much. That is a real contribution when you are sick. The rest is a bonus, and I will be specific about how much of a bonus.
Garlic, and Why When You Add It Matters
Garlic is the ingredient I most want to talk about, because I had this one wrong for years.
The compound everyone means when they talk about garlic and immunity is allicin. Allicin is not sitting in the clove waiting for you. It forms when you crush or chop the garlic, through an enzyme called alliinase, and that enzyme is fragile. Heat destroys it.
Research in The Journal of Nutrition found that as little as 45 minutes of oven heating blocked garlic's activity in a way consistent with alliinase being inactivated, and that letting crushed garlic stand for 10 minutes before heating prevented the total loss. Work published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found something similar with human platelets: brief heating was fine, but heating past about 10 minutes wiped out the effect, except in cloves that had been crushed first, which held on to some of it.
So if you crush six cloves of garlic, throw them in the pot at the start and simmer for 30 minutes, you have made garlic-flavored soup. Which is lovely. It is not doing the thing you added garlic for.
What I do now: crush the garlic first thing, leave it on the board for 10 minutes while I chop everything else, then stir it in during the last five minutes of simmering. You get a sharper, brighter garlic flavor too, which I have come to prefer.
One thing I want to correct from an earlier version of this post. I used to cite a trial reporting that garlic cut cold symptom duration by about 70 percent. That trial exists, but the author's listed affiliation is a garlic industry body, and when Cochrane reviewed the whole literature in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, only that one trial met their inclusion criteria out of eight candidates. Their conclusion was that there is insufficient evidence on garlic for preventing or treating colds, and that claims of effectiveness rest largely on poor-quality evidence. The trial also tested an allicin capsule, not garlic in soup.
I still put six cloves in. It tastes good, the mechanism is plausible and the downside is nothing. But I am not going to tell you it cuts your cold by 70 percent, because the evidence does not support that.
Fresh Ginger, Not Ground
This is a new addition to the recipe and it comes from one of the more interesting findings I came across.
A study in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology tested ginger against human respiratory syncytial virus in human airway cell lines. Fresh ginger reduced viral plaque formation in a dose-dependent way and appeared to block the virus from attaching and getting into cells. Dried ginger showed no dose-dependent effect at all.
That is a cell-line study, not people, and I want to be clear about that. It is not evidence that ginger shortens your cold. But the fresh versus dried distinction is concrete, it costs nothing to act on and it is a detail I have not seen mentioned on a single other soup recipe. Two tablespoons of freshly grated ginger goes in with the onions and celery. The jar of ground ginger stays in the cupboard.
Turmeric Needs Black Pepper
Turmeric has been in this recipe from the beginning and it is staying, but it was doing less work than I thought, because I was leaving out its partner.
Curcumin, the active compound in turmeric, is absorbed poorly. A study in Planta Medica gave healthy volunteers curcumin alone and then curcumin with 20 mg of piperine, the compound in black pepper. On its own, serum curcumin was either undetectable or close to it. With piperine, absorption rose dramatically.
That was a small study using a curcumin dose far larger than anything you would get from a teaspoon of turmeric in a pot of soup, so I am not claiming a therapeutic effect from your dinner. But black pepper is free, it belongs in the soup anyway and turmeric without it is mostly color. Curcumin is also fat-soluble, so the butter in this recipe is doing you a favor.
Half a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper, in with the turmeric.
You will also see turmeric described as an antihistamine, which I have repeated myself in the past. The support I could find for that is a Cellular Immunology study in mice with induced allergic rhinitis, where curcumin lowered histamine and improved symptoms. That is a mouse, and allergic rhinitis is not a cold. I am mentioning it because I said it before and I would rather show you the actual source than quietly drop it.
Onions, Celery and the Rest of the Base
Two yellow onions, a cup of celery, canned tomato, smoked paprika, cayenne, Italian seasoning and a big handful of cilantro at the end.
I am going to be straight with you about this group. An earlier version of this post said onions contain antioxidant, anti-cancer and antibacterial substances, and linked to a paper I had assumed backed it up. When I went back and read that paper properly, it is a review of allicin chemistry. It is about garlic. It says nothing about onions. That link should not have been there and it is gone.
Onions and celery are here because they build the base of a good soup, and because eating vegetables is good for you in the ordinary unglamorous way that does not need a study attached. The cayenne and smoked paprika are here because heat helps a blocked nose feel less blocked while you are eating, and because the soup tastes better with them. That is the whole claim.
One note worth having: research in the Sao Paulo Medical Journal found heat treatment reduced the antioxidant properties of both onion and garlic in lab testing. Cooking costs you something. It also makes the food edible and warm when you are sick, which is worth more.
Why Protein Belongs in an Immune Boosting Soup
Here is the part I care most about, and the part that is missing from every other immune soup recipe I looked at.
Your immune system is built out of protein. Antibodies are protein. The cells that go after a virus are made and replaced using amino acids. When protein intake is inadequate, that machinery suffers. A review in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition lays out that older adults need at least 1.0 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, above the standard RDA of 0.8, and that falling short contributes to decreased immune function, poorer healing and longer recovery from illness.
That is a review rather than a trial, so treat it as background rather than proof. But it points at something I see constantly in the women I work with, who are already under-eating protein on a good day. On a sick day, when appetite drops and dinner becomes toast, intake falls off a cliff at exactly the moment the body needs it most.
So I raised the chicken in this recipe from a pound and a half to two pounds. It now lands at roughly 30 grams of protein a serving, which is a real meal rather than a warm drink with vegetables in it. If you want the protein higher still, stir shredded rotisserie chicken into your bowl, or use a bone broth in place of the regular chicken broth.
If getting enough protein is the thing you keep meaning to fix, my high protein ground beef recipes and my triple meat chili are the other two pots I make on repeat all winter.
What I Left Out, and Why
Three things you will find in almost every immune boosting soup article that are not in mine, and I think the reasons are more useful than another ingredient would have been.
Zinc
Zinc has real evidence behind it, which is why this one is worth explaining rather than ignoring. A meta-analysis in CMAJ found zinc shortened cold duration in adults, and a Cochrane review in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews found the same, with heavy caveats about inconsistency between trials.
Read the detail though. Cochrane specifies lozenges at 75 mg a day or more, started within 24 hours of symptoms. No bowl of soup gets anywhere near 75 mg of ionized zinc. Adding a zinc-rich ingredient and implying you have replicated that result would be exactly the kind of thing I am trying to stop doing on this page.
A Squeeze of Lemon for Vitamin C
This one surprised me. The Cochrane review on vitamin C, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, pooled more than 10,000 people in general-community trials and found regular supplementation did not reduce how often people caught colds. Taking it regularly shortened adult colds by about 8 percent. Starting it after symptoms appear, which is what most of us do, showed no consistent effect on duration or severity.
Squeeze lemon over your soup if you like lemon. It brightens the tomato. It is not doing anything measurable for the cold.
Mushrooms for Beta-Glucans
The beta-glucan trial I could find, in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, gave 50 athletes a concentrated mushroom-derived supplement daily for three months and tracked respiratory infections. That is a supplement, in athletes, taken for months as prevention. It tells you nothing about sliced mushrooms in tonight's dinner.
Add mushrooms if you like them in soup. I sometimes do. Just do not add them believing they are doing something the research has not shown.
What About Echinacea?
I have taken echinacea at the first sign of a cold for years, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But the Cochrane review, covering 24 trials and 4,631 participants, is sobering: not one prevention comparison reached statistical significance, and of the treatment trials reporting duration, only one showed an effect. Their conclusion was that echinacea has not been shown to help treat colds, with a possible weak preventive benefit of questionable clinical relevance. You can read it in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
I still reach for it and a mug of immunity tea, mostly out of habit and because a hot drink feels good. That is a preference, not a recommendation, and now you know exactly what the evidence looks like.
Why Chicken Soup Helps When You Have a Cold
The oldest remedy on the list has better support than most of the trendy ones, which I enjoy more than I should.
Most of the benefit is ordinary and immediate. The liquid helps with hydration, which matters when you are running a temperature. The warm broth soothes a sore throat and helps keep mucus thin and sinuses moving. The steam helps. The cayenne helps. None of that needs a study.
Beyond that, the often-cited University of Nebraska work, published in Chest, found that chicken soup inhibited the migration of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell involved in the inflammatory response that causes a lot of cold symptoms. The researchers suggested a mild anti-inflammatory effect could explain why the soup makes people feel better.
Worth knowing: that was done in a lab, testing soup against cells in an assay, not in sick people. It is a plausible mechanism rather than a demonstrated cure. The researchers said as much themselves.
How to Make It
Full quantities and steps are in the recipe card below. The three things worth knowing before you start:
- Crush the garlic first. Before anything else. Let it sit on the board for 10 minutes while you chop the rest, then add it near the end of cooking.
- Grate the ginger fresh. Ground ginger from the cupboard is a different ingredient here.
- Grind the black pepper in with the turmeric so they go into the fat together.
It is a 40 minute soup and most of that is unattended simmering, which is the only kind of cooking I want to do when I feel rough. Avocado on top is optional but I never skip it.
Storing and Freezing
This keeps in the fridge for four days and freezes well for up to three months. I portion it into single servings before freezing, because the version of me who has a cold is not going to defrost a two-quart block and divide it.
One practical note that follows from the garlic research: if you are reheating a batch, stir a clove of freshly crushed garlic into your bowl at the end. It takes ten seconds and it puts back some of what the first cook and the reheat took out. Do not add the cilantro or the avocado until serving.
Making this in September and stashing a few portions is the single most useful thing you can do for your December self.
Spending Your Health Budget Where It Counts
If this post has a theme, it is that a lot of what gets sold as immune support does not survive a careful read, while the boring things (enough protein, enough sleep, enough fluid) keep turning out to matter. I put together a guide on where the money and effort are worth spending and where they are not. Grab it below.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best soup for a cold?
A soup with real protein in it, enough liquid to help you stay hydrated and enough spice to help a blocked nose. Chicken based soups check all three, which is most of why the traditional answer has held up. Beyond that, ingredient choice matters less than people claim. Pick one you will finish while you feel awful.
Does an immune boosting soup shorten a cold?
No soup has been shown to shorten a cold. What soup does well is hydration, warmth, symptom relief and getting nutrition into you on a day when you do not feel like eating. Those are worth having. Anyone promising more than that is going beyond what the research supports.
Should I use fresh or ground ginger?
Fresh. In laboratory testing on human airway cells, fresh ginger reduced viral plaque formation in a dose-dependent way while dried ginger did not. That is a cell study rather than a trial in people, but fresh ginger also tastes better here, so there is no reason to use the jar.
Can I make this in a slow cooker?
Yes, on low for 4 to 6 hours, though I would brown the chicken and sweat the onions first for flavor. Add the crushed garlic, the cilantro and the avocado at the very end rather than at the start, so the garlic keeps more of its active compounds.
“Sicky Soup,” Soup for a Cold
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter, divided
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 2 medium yellow onions
- 1 cup chopped celery
- 2 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated
- 32 ounces chicken broth
- 1 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
- 1 teaspoon salt, to taste
- 14 ½ ounces canned tomato
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- 2 teaspoon italian seasoning
- ½ teaspoon cayenne
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ⅓ cup chopped cilantro
- 6 cloves garlic
- avocado, for garnish, optional
Instructions
- In a large dutch oven or soup pot, melt a tablespoon of butter.
- Place the chicken on the bottom of the pot, brown both sides and remove.
- In the same pot, melt the rest of the butter.
- Pour in the onions and celery. Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- In the meantime chop the chicken into bite sized pieces.
- Add the broth, tomatoes, turmeric, Italian seasoning, cayenne, salt, pepper and paprika. Stir to combine.
- Cook at least until chicken is fully cooked, about another 15 minutes.
- Add the fresh cilantro and cook for an additional 5 minutes.
- Serve hot and garnish with avocado, if desired.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
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