I’ve been so excited for soup week! Not only am I a huge fan of soups, but I am also a proud owner of the New England Soup Factory Cookbook that has over 100 unique soup recipes. I have yet to have a bad experience making one of her soups, which is great because each recipe makes 8-12 servings, and I would hate to have to eat my way through a vat of sub par soup. The first soup I made from this cookbook was the mulligatawny with homemade vegetable stock, which is arguably the best soup I’ve ever had. I also made a sausage black bean soup in the fall.

Today I am making a less out-there soup, Spicy Chicken and Rice Flu Chaser Soup. It’s basically a chicken and rice soup with an extra kick that’s meant to warm you up and clean your sinuses for the winter. When I inevitably get a cold, these leftovers should do the trick. The “medicinal” components of the soup include caramelized garlic, lemon juice and zest, dried mint leaves, cinnamon and cayenne. I guess it’s like the herbal tea of soups!

I caramelized 20 cloves of garlic by submerging them in olive oil and baking them for 45 minutes. The soup was cooked with a whole chicken for 2 1/2 hours until the chicken fell off the bone.