The articles I’ve been writing and Facebook Live videos I’ve been making about food and healthy cooking have been incredibly popular. People are loving them. My video showing people how to make my morning smoothie recipe to give you energy and keep you full throughout the morning has more than 46,000 views and over 230 shares.

Another extremely popular Facebook Live was on my immune-boosting, cold-and-flu killer broth. Whenever someone in our family feels a little sinus congestion starting to set in, or we notice some sniffles, or we start to feel generally run down and as if our body is fighting something, we whip up a batch of this. I hope you love it as much as we do. 

All it contains is onion, garlic, and a few common spices. I love simple solutions because they’re easy to implement and effective.

Onion and garlic have been known for centuries for their healing properties. Modern science has confirmed that. Both have antiviral, antibiotic properties to kill both viruses and bacteria. They all also provides lots of incredible antioxidants. Onion and garlic contain quercetin, an antioxidant that can help decrease mast cell activity. Mast cells release histamine, which creates your runny nose. They also have properties that help improve circulation and provide incredible cardiovascular benefits.

Cayenne pepper is used to add spice and heat to food. The hotness comes from a chemical called capsaicin, which is also one of the botanical’s principal therapeutic substances. Other active constituents include carotenoids, vitamins A and C, and volatile oils. Cayenne has been used historically for asthma and upper respiratory infections and to prevent ulcers.

Cinnamon balances out the heat from the cayenne pepper and adds its own health benefits to the broth. This spice has a rich history of helping humans. The first recorded use of cinnamon was around 2800 B.C.E. by Shen Nung, the father of Chinese medicine. Since then it has been used in many different cultures around the world as a medicine, a culinary spice, in religious ceremonies, and as a food preservative. This powerful contains anti-fungal, antibacterial and antiviral properties. Cinnamon aids in digestion, is anti-inflammatory, has cardiovascular benefits and has been used as a home remedy for cough and the common cold for millennia.

We sip the broth all day. Typically, we’ll drink four or more cups throughout the day. Every time it’s gotten rid of those pesky infections. It’s even great with a little modification for kids (hint: omit the cayenne pepper). They’ll love it. It’s what we do for our family and it works.

I hope you love it too. It’s simple and it’s quick to make.

Preparation time: Less than 10 minutes.

Cooking time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

Vegan, gluten-free.

• 12 cups water
• 1 yellow, organic onion (red onion will work too, but we prefer the taste of the yellow onion)
• 1 head of organic garlic
• 1 teaspoon Himalayan or Sea Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper (optional but encouraged)

Directions

1. Add water to a soup pot and bring water to a boil. Reduce temperature to low (simmer).
2. While water is heating up, finely chop the onion and the entire head of garlic. I use a food processor instead of hand chopping.
3. Add finely chopped onion and garlic to water.
4. Add the salt.
5. Add the ground cinnamon.
6. Add the cayenne pepper. If you don’t like the heat of cayenne pepper, you can omit this ingredient or reduce the amount you use to make it more palatable. But cayenne pepper has wonderful healing properties, so I encourage people to use it.
7. Stir in all ingredients.
8. Cover pot and let simmer for 15 minutes.

How to Drink it

If you don’t like having bits of onion and garlic in your cup, strain out the onion and garlic for each cup. We use a hand strainer that we’ll hold over the cup with one hand and use a ladle to dish up the broth with the other hand. The onion and garlic will be caught by the strainer and you’ll be left with only the broth in your cup. We then put the onion and garlic back in the pot to continue steeping.

Don’t strain the entire broth at once. The reason is that you want the onion and garlic to continue to steep in the water for hours to release their full benefits into the water.

Drink four or more cups of this broth throughout the day. 

Storage

If you have some both leftover, you can put it in a glass jar and pop it into the refrigerator. It will keep fresh for several days. Store it if you need to, but hopefully, you’re drinking it up faster than that.

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