Homemade Herbal Cough Drops For The Cold Or Flu, Long-Term Food Storage Friendly

A few weeks ago the kids came down with a cold that plagued them with sore throats and a nasty cough. After running out of our store-bought cough drops, and not wanting to take two sick kids to the grocery store, I decided to make some at home. The homemade herbal cough drops for the cold or flu are easy to make, and more likely than not, you already have the ingredients you need.

We started with my cold and flu busting homemade herbal tea and even made a homemade herbal cough syrup .  You can us the herbal tea recipe I used, or just some herbal tea you have around the house. I have read that simply honey is better than any other cough medicine for alleviating a sore throat or cough, so using another liquid should be fine too as long as honey is the base ingredient.


I will tell you, around two days into the kids cold, I started to feel a sore throat and achy body coming on. My head was foggy, and my throat scratchy. So, I made some homemade chicken noodle soup, drank some homemade herbal tea, and sucked on several homemade herbal cough drops. By the next day, there was no symptom of a cold left, and I felt great! It's totally possible this was a coincidence, but I'm pretty sure that taking care of the symptoms at the first sign, went a long way in preventing them from getting worse.

Please keep in mind, I am not a doctor, nor am I in a position to administer medical advice. These recipes have been tested by my family and we have survived to talk about it. Use this recipe at your own risk.

Homemade Herbal Cough Drops for the Cold or Flu

Ingredients

• 1 cup herbal tea
• 1.5 cups honey
• Glass of ice water (for testing the candy syrup)
• Candy thermometer (although you don't need it for this recipe, I'd put it on the must-have list for every kitchen)
• Silicone candy mold or hard candy mold. I use these cute, heart shaped molds. They are a great size, slightly larger than a store-bought cough drop

Directions:

1. In a large saucepan, heat tea and honey mixture on the stove on medium/high heat, stirring frequently (you want a large saucepan because the mixture will "crawl" up the sides of the pan as it boils"
2. Keep stirring mixture and allow it to get to 300 degrees on a candy thermometer (hard crack stage). This will take 20-30 minutes
3. To test for hard crack stage using a glass of ice water; remove pan from stove once your mixture has started to bubble up the sides and drop a spoonful of the candy syrup into a glass of ice water. If it is a hard, crackable candy it is ready. If it is still chewy, cook it a little longer.
4. Be careful not to overcook the mixture, it will turn to a dark-caramel color and won't taste as great
5. Once your candy syrup has reached hard crack stage, remove the pan from the heat and quickly transfer syrup to a silicon candy mold or a hard candy mold.
6. Allow cough drops to cool, then pop them out of the mold. 
7. Drops will be a bit sticky still, you can toss them in powdered sugar if you'd like. We didn't and they were just fine

We stored ours in a mason jar in the fridge. This is probably not necessary at all, but I liked them cold.

Warning! DO NOT use a plastic chocolate mold for this recipe, you can read my post Using Plastic Chocolate Candy Molds For Hard Candy, A Precautionary Tale to find out more about what happens when you don't use the correct mold.