Chicken soup is often the perfect entry-point dish for anybody starting an elimination diet, but even then, I often need to modify the recipe to accommodate individual needs.

The first ingredient to consider is the broth, which can be made about a million different ways. Should it be only meat broth or long cooking bone broth? It depends on how sensitive you are to glutamates. Should it be made with apple cider vinegar? No if you have histamine intolerance. Should it be made with vegetables? I personally don’t as I find meat, bone and good quality water perfectly sufficient to make a healing and delicious broth.

Now, let’s talk about the vegetables in the actual soup. Here too, there are many issues to consider.

Some people can’t tolerate onion or garlic as they both contain fructans (oligosaccharides). That’s OK, you can make chicken soup without onion or garlic and it will still be tasty.

I like to use butternut squash and cabbage, but if for some reason those don’t work for you, compensate with similar quantities of other vegetables. I’ve used sweet and white potatoes, green plantain, jicama, radish, turnips and, of course, other kinds of squash instead of the butternut squash. The cabbage I’ve replaced with kale, collard greens, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choi, summer squashes, and various kinds of mushrooms.

If you don’t tolerate fiber, you might also need to use fewer vegetables.

When you think about all the possible combinations of ingredients —and the many different foods an individual might not tolerate, you could conclude it’s impossible to write a universal recipe for chicken soup. And you might be right. But I like a challenge. So here I give you my best attempt at Chicken Soup for Everybody.