Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's Top 5 Healing Soup Recipes

Off the Menu with Dara can be heard every Saturday from 11:00-Noon on News Radio 830 WCCO!

It was hard to think of a recipe round-up which made sense this week, when we're talking about the tough topic of food allergies. What can you eat when you're not feeling well? The one thing most people seem to agree on is that you have to keep eating, and the best thing to heal you when you're sick is: Soup. Simple soups, especially broths made with bones and cooked for a long time so the gelatin, minerals, and amino acids become easily digestible. These are not complicated foods! But they do require time and attention. And if you're feeling bad, they can really help you feel better. Here are the Top 5 Healing Soup Recipes!

(credit: Essence of Emeril)

Fish Fumet
Recipe

White fish bones, a little lemon juice and white wine, onion, parsley and salt and pepper are the basis for a concentrated fish broth called a fumet. Can you do this with your walleye bones from last summer's fishing? Absolutely! But not the heads. Or ask your fish-market, they'll have plenty of bones to sell you. Use it for chowder, paella, risotto—or just use it to poach a fillet of fish with some greens.

(credit: Kate Mathis/Marthastewart.com)

Ham Bone Broth
Recipe

Never let your friends and family throw out a ham bone again! Even Martha Stewart doesn't. Just cook it in water with an onion, a couple bay leaves, some celery leaves—it's easy. Then use it to make white bean soup, split pea soup, lentils, or just drink it on its own to take the edge off afternoon hunger.

(credit: chow.com)

Vegetable Broth
Recipe

Is there anything for the vegetarians in the crowd? Yes, there is. For my money the key to a really good vegetable broth is making sure you brown the vegetables before hand to a really deep caramel brown – if you can get it to look like beef broth I say you're there.

(credit: nomnompaleo.com)

Beef Broth
Recipe

All the athletes, all the new age health practitioners, and anyone else into healthy eating are all about bone broth these days. Bone broth. In the olden days we called it soup! It's what happens when you cook bones in water with a little vinegar, which liberates the gelatin, the chondroitin and glucosamine which people are always taking in pill form to make their joints stop hurting. Are you in the mood to do something thrifty and old fashioned which makes you feel better? Also: this is how the Lakers eat, and you know their joints take a beating! Don't they look healthy?

(credit: James Merrell/Barefoot Contessa)

Chicken Soup
Recipe

They don't call it "Jewish Penicillin" for nothing. Chicken soup has been scientifically proven to end colds faster, fight flu, clear up congestion, boost antibody and white blood cell counts—did you think your grandma was wrong? She was not wrong! I picked a recipe from Ina Garten because she uses parsnips, which gives the broth an added sweetness that I like, but if you don't care for parsnips, just leave them out. Also: Save your rotisserie chicken, roast chicken, and deep fried turkey carcasses, and boil the bones with water and whatever wilty veggies you have in your crisper drawer. It's good for you! Cold season is stretching before us like an endless tundra. You will need that soup!