Cold Remedy Review: Boiled Coke With Ginger And Lemon
Hot coke for a cold cold.
I have a cold. I am telling you this for your pity and so you might offer to bring me something, like soup or a small gift. (Please leave it outside and text me after you’ve left.) When I told Awl slack the news this morning, hoping for a similar outcome, two members said this:
Good idea: boil some coke. I don’t remember why but at some point recently we discussed this cold remedy, allegedly a popular cold remedy in Hong Kong:
Boiled Coke with Ginger and Lemon Recipe
I don’t remember what the takeaway was — please, you have to bear with me and my frail work-chat memory, I am deathly ill with a cold, please bring a gift — but I think it was that it sounded like it would be fine and would be better with alcohol in it. But would it cure one of her cold? An incredible question.
In the past I’ve tried a “cold remedy” that was: eating a garlic clove with honey on it. I hated this remedy very much but it did half-work the first time. The second time it did not work at all. I doubt I’ll be doing it again. This is just so you’re familiar with my background in cold remedy testing.
Here are the ingredients to this:
- Coke
- Ginger
- Lemon
Would you believe that I had all of these elements of this recipe already, right here in my apartment? Well, you shouldn’t. That was a test. I had to buy the coke. It cost $1. I was supposed to buy dish soap while I was at the bodega, too, but I forgot. Now what am I going to do? Go back? Unlikely that that will happen today, but we’ll see.
How you make the coke with lemon and ginger is: You cut up the non-coke parts and boil it all together for like ten minutes. (You boil it and then let it simmer.)
Here is an unflattering photo:
Then you pour it into a mug.
Here’s my review: It tastes similar to a hot lemon, water, honey, and ginger drink, which is what I usually drink when I’m sick, but slightly cokier. It tastes very fine and normal, which you could have guessed from the ingredients. It is slightly thicker than tea, but if you gave it to someone and didn’t tell them about the consistency difference and they weren’t looking to find it, I bet they wouldn’t say anything.
So far I still have a cold.
It hurt my throat to drink at one point but not otherwise.
I’ll update this post tomorrow with whether or not I was cured overnight.
Watch this space.
UPDATE Dec 20., 2016, 7:47 a.m.:
I feel worse!