Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

Tea Name:

Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

Traditional Chinese Name:

雪梨蘋果菊花清熱茶 (xuě lí píng guǒ jú huā qīng rè chá) 

Nature:  Cooling

Taste: Sweet and sour

(You can read this article on the impact on your body of different food tastes!)

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

When it’s hot, stuffy and the temperatures are blowing the thermometers through the roof, this deliciously sweet and tart tea is perfect for this type of weather!

The mercury hit 32 C yesterday and what better way to cool the body than with a cooling, sweet tea that can help reduce internal heat, clears and disperses dryness, and moistens the lungs and stomach.   

The amazing thing about this tea is that you can also enjoy the snow pear and apples as part of the tea.  With the right cook time of 10 minutes, parts of the fruit are still semi-crunchy!  So delicious!  And you don’t need to add any sugar or honey because of the natural sugars of the fruit.

 

What’s involved?

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 2 cups

Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
  1. Cut up your snow pears and apples into cubes, keeping the skin on.  This helps hold it together and not disintegrate, but actually, from a Traditional Chinese Medicine benefit perspective, it’s the skins that hold the most value!  I talk about this below a little more!
  2. In a stove top safe ceramic or glass pot, add all your ingredients together
  3. Boil on medium high for 10 minutes, or until it’s bubbling for at least a good 5 minutes to really get the flavours out
  4. Serve and enjoy!
  5. You don’t need to add any honey or sugars at all!  

Snow pear are amazing for cooling and moisturizing the body, targeting the lungs and stomach.  It’s perfect for yin deficiencies (which includes cough) and reducing fire in the body and lungs.

It’s actually the skin of the snow pear that has the most power!  That’s why I keep them on when I’m making a tea with them or a soup.  And they provide a good source of fiber for the body.

Alternatively, if you don’t eat snow pear skins when you’re having the fruit, I would suggest to keep the peeled skin to dry, or freeze in a ziploc to save for use in soups or teas, but you don’t need to eat them!

 

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Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

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Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea

Tea Name: Cooling Snow Pears and Apples in a Chrysanthemum Tea Traditional Chinese Name: 雪梨蘋果菊花清熱茶 (xuě lí píng guǒ jú huā qīng rè chá)  Nature:  Cooling Taste: Sweet and sour (You can read this article on the impact on your body of different food tastes!) For more...

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Green radish with carrots & corn in a Chinese herbal pork broth

Green radish with carrots & corn in a Chinese herbal pork broth

Green radish with carrots & corn in a Chinese herbal pork broth

Soup Name:

Green radish with carrots & corn in a Chinese Herbal Pork Broth

Traditional Chinese Name:

紅青蘿蔔湯 (hóng qing luóbo tang)

Nature:  Cooling

Taste: Sweet and savory

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

My parents came home last night from a cruise from Italy and are jet lagging and there’s nothing more warming, homecoming, and beautiful than a familiar Chinese soup waiting for them!

I made an easy green radish, carrots, and corn pork herbal broth.  The trick to this soup is to really let it boil out.  I made it early morning and then pretty much let it sit in the thermal pot all day until dinner.  

TIP:  This soup actually tastes even better left overnight!  Don’t forget to boil it before you sleep and don’t open the lid or cover (this will ensure that everything is killed off and isn’t reintroduced, this is how they manufacture canned food and soups in large scale!).  Re-boil the next day and you can still drink it.

 

Traditionally in the Cantonese soup repertoire, this green radish and carrot soup is cooling and often recommended if you’re feeling heaty, want to cool the body, or it’s hot and humid in the summer and autumn months.

It is also commonly found as a dinner soup, where restaurants will serve it at the beginning of the meal known as “lai tong” (or aka, free soup).  You’ll find the bits of carrots and green radish chopped up and along with pork (or chicken).

What’s involved?

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 2-3 hours

Total time: 2 hours and 20 mins

Serves: 10 bowls

Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
  1. Boil both your soup water (3L) and another pot to blanch the pork bones in (enough to cover all the bones)
  2. Once your blanching water boils, gently drop in the pork bones and boil on high for 5-7 minutes, until the brown foam begins to form on top of the water.  You can turn off the stove at this time.
  3. Prepare your vegetables by peeling and chopping into large bite-sizes
  4. Once your soup water boils, transfer the pork bones to your soup pot.  You can either rinse them gently in the water, or do a water rinse under warm water to remove all the debris and foam stuck to the pork bones
  5. Drop in all the ingredients (herbs + vegetables) together
  6. Cover and boil on high for 30 minutes
  7. Transfer to a thermal pot for at least 2-3 hours
  8. Re-boil for 10 minutes prior to serving
If you’d like to quick boil this faster, I’d suggest cutting up the pieces smaller, almost cubed.

Be sure to also buy fresh, firm green radish.  You’ll know they’re fresh because they are super hard to touch and you can’t really squeeze them.  When they get soft, squishy (but not leaky), they’re already drying out and aging.

This combination of green radish and carrots are amazingly delicious!  Some people will also add white radishes, which makes the soup even more cooling, and corn is also a nice addition!  Enjoy!

 

Q&A

A huge thank you to my Instagram community for the questions as they also hugely benefit other readers who may be thinking the same thing!  

 

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Soup Name:

Korean  Kimchi and Tofu Jjigae (Soup)

Nature:  Cool (although could be warmer depending on how spicy you make it, but this is driven by the cooling white radish and tofu)

Taste:  Sweet, Salty

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

I know there’s a thought that this is a fusion (and not completely authentically Korean) of Chinese and Western elements, and you’re right! 

The Korean soup dashi base though, I can assure you is completely authentic!  You can find the full post and video available for you to start this amazing soup.

The great thing about this soup base is that you can make so many soups with this base!  And today, I really wanted a kimchi and tofu soup (usually served with rice!). 

Once you have the soup base, you can craft or create the soup you want.  I’ve gone with a simple combination that is less spicy and a bit untraditional in that it’s more like a Chinese fusion version with the Korean dashi soup base.

Some key ingredients in Korean spicy stews is the pepper flakes.  This is what makes it bright red and spicy!  

What’s involved?

Prep time: 5 mins (with 40 mins from dashi prep)

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 15 mins

Serves: 1 L individual pot of stew (or soup)

Ingredients

Optional:

  • 20 g of Korean pepper flakes (gochugaru)
  • 1 tsp of toasted sesame oil
  • 1 raw egg

 

Cooking Instructions

To make the Korean dashi (soup base), you can follow these instructions below (and also following this post):

 

  1. Remove the heads from your dried anchovies and put them into your soup pot.  No washing or cleaning is needed, just simply remove from the bag.
  2. Remove the dried seaweed sheet from the packaging and snap into pieces to fit into the pot and put into the pot
  3. Peel your white radish (enough to remove all the skin if you plan to eat it, as the skin can be quite tough and unpleasant to eat) and slice into 1 cm thick slices (or any thickness you’d like)
  4. Put everything into your soup pot
  5. Add in the water
  6. Boil on high for 10 minutes, covered
  7. Reduce boil to another 20 minutes
  8. Strain all the ingredients, separating the liquid from the soup goodies 
  9. This strained soup is your dashi!  You can use directly as is into your soup of choice or put into mason jars and store in the fridge for up to 3 days.

To make the rest of the kimchi tofu soup:

 

  1. In a separate individual pot, scoop the Korean dashi soup to start this dish.  For mine, I’m using ox tail and fresh white radish, so I’ve scooped healthy amounts as part of my meal.  Scoop in ONLY HALF the volume of the pot as you’ll want to save space for the additional ingredients
  2. Turn that on to a medium boil
  3. Add in the fresh kimchi, soft tofu (in the middle), fresh cabbage and any meats
  4. Cover and let that boil for 10 minutes to allow all the ingredients to soften together
  5. Once soft, you can garnish with green onions
  6. Serve while still bubbling and enjoy!

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Tea Name:

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Chinese Name: 

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Nature:  Warm

Taste:  Sweet, Salty

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

There are as many versions of a Chinese-styled corn and egg drop soup as there are likely ABC soups!  This is a staple in lots of Cantonese cuisines, with a thinner consistency over an American Chinese version (which uses corn starch as a thickener).

It is also known as the “egg flower soup”, which I love!  Because the idea is that the egg drop flowers into the soup as you pour it in, giving it a beautiful non-uniform design inside the soup!

 

This is actually one of my dad’s favourites and you can find the very basic version of the soup, the Corn and Egg Drop Basic Soup here.  I remember having this very often as a kid, especially as it’s super easy to make, the ingredients are readily available, and it is delicious served on rice!!  It’s almost like a sauce, but not quite!

With this version, I’ve gone a bit Chinese with some of the herbal additives just because I wanted a slightly warmer take on it and definitely a heartier version with the potatoes because I know my kids love potatoes!  Honestly, I would recommend you tweak, build, or create whatever inspires you!  This is the beauty of cooking (versus baking… but we can save that debate for another day!). 

What’s involved?

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 35 mins

Serves: 8 bowls of soup

Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
  1. You can prepare all your ingredients first, primarily the onions, garlic, potatoes, and fresh corn on the cob
  2. Chop your onions quite finely into cubes
  3. Dice up your garlic
  4. Remove the ears from the corn and shuck the corn, taking only the kernels.  I tend to snap the corn in half first so that it stands on the flat side so I can just shuck it down (see video)
  5. Wash, peel, and cube your potatoes into bite-sized pieces
  6. In your soup pot, with a bit of oil and on low heat, fry the onions on low heat to cook and slightly caramelize 
  7. Once the onions are soft, throw in the diced garlic to fry for 5 minutes on low heat
  8. Add in all the shucked corn kernels and stir for 5 minutes
  9. Turn up the heat to high now and add 2L water (or chicken broth)
  10. Allow this to come to a boil
  11. Once it boils, add in your Chinese herbs and the cubed potatoes
  12. Add in the canned cream of corn at this point
  13. Cover the soup
  14. Be sure to stir this soup once in awhile to prevent any of the ingredients from sticking to the bottom
  15. Once that boils again, you can reduce the boil to a low heat, keeping it covered for 10 minutes to allow the potatoes to fully soften
  16. In a bowl, crack your eggs and scramble
  17. Gently stir the soup in circles as you drizzle the egg drop into the soup, allow the eggs to cook as it enters the soup and not in clumps
  18. Serve, garnish, and enjoy!

Tips:

  • This is designed as a quick boil soup which means that the ingredients are cut up quite small (so they cook quicker)
  • For a true warm soup, consider adding sliced ginger, sliced tangerine peels, and even sesame oil (which is delicious and fragrant!)
  • I tend not to use a corn starch thickener here, but this really quite personal.  If you do use corn starch, be sure to dissolve the corn starch in cold water first and gently pour into the soup and stir
  • You can use frozen corn as well (although it doesn’t taste as yummy, but still works!)
  • Be sure to continuously stir as this soup cooks as to avoid any ingredients sticking to the bottom and burning
  • SERVE WITH RICE!!  SO YUMMY!

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Oh how I love thee, my salted orange! Let me count the ways…

Tea Name: The Salted Orange Traditional Chinese Name: 鹽蒸橙子 (yán zhēng chéngzi) Nature:  warm Taste:  sweet, salty For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.What?  Salted oranges? Let's start by saying that if you see a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor (and even...

Oh how I love thee, my salted orange!  Let me count the ways…

Oh how I love thee, my salted orange! Let me count the ways…

Oh how I love thee, my salted orange! Let me count the ways…

Tea Name:

The Salted Orange

Traditional Chinese Name:

鹽蒸橙子 (yán zhēng chéngzi)

Nature:  warm

Taste:  sweet, salty

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

What?  Salted oranges?

Let’s start by saying that if you see a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor (and even all the old ladies at the wet mart that I meet), that if you’ve got a cough, you SHOULD NOT be consuming oranges.  Especially, if they are cold and super sweet.  From a TCM perspective, this exasperates the cough even more because it’s sweet and the cold creates excess yin, which makes you cough even more.

However, there are ways to modify the nature of the orange!  Almost magic, but not quite.  You literally have to increase the temperature of the orange by simply steaming it!  It’s the same principle in how lettuce is a cooling ingredient, but once fried with ginger and garlic, it becomes neutral or even warming. 

Similarly, you expose the orange to some heat and shift its nature from cool to warm and then add salt to it.  Salt itself, is also a warming ingredient that is salty to taste and softens hardness, eliminates accumulations and dissolves abscesses.  It is amazing for reducing toxic heat, which is normally found with sore throats, and helps reduce swelling, which is also a symptom that sore throats often bring.

From a western perspective, fresh oranges have ample amounts of vitamin C, but does begin to denature and breakdown at temperatures of 86 degrees Celsius.  However, you can still benefit from these benefits if you soak it in warm water (below 86C) and add salt to it as well.  But the Chinese do love their warm healing tonics and teas!

 

What’s involved?

Prep time: 2 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 12 mins

Serves: 1 person

Ingredients

     

    Cooking Instructions
    1. Cut the orange with the flatter side of the orange down so it can sit properly in a shallow bowl
    2. I will use a chopstick to break up some of the orange so the juices can be released prior to steaming, this is optional
    3. Generously sprinkle the salt on top of the orange.  Again, optionally, you can poke the salt directly into the orange.
    4. Begin to boil your steamer or pot
    5. Once your steamer is ready, put your orange into the pot, ensuring it’s not submerged into the water
    6. Cover and steam on medium for 10 minutes
    7. Once done, remove from the steamer and allow it to cool slightly
    8. Using a spoon, break up the orange inside, mixing up the salt and juices and enjoy!

    Alternatively, you can use the microwave to do it, heating it at 2 minute intervals at a time, covered, until your desired internal temperature.  Be sure to mix it around at the end of every cycle to check.  The microwave is a just a bit more inconsistent in its cooking.

    The other option is that you can directly half the orange and share with someone!  My mom’s done this with me and my sisters and have made 4 halves and the whole family could enjoy this.

    The best thing about this is that it’s such a portable recipe!  You can bring it with you camping, you could take it with you on vacation, and the ingredients are so readily available!  It’s literally, a tonic on the go!!

    Try it and let me know how it goes!

    The Q&A (from TikTok)

    A huge thanks to my TikTok community for the engagement on this video.  I’m now answering some of these common questions and answers here.

    Can I also add honey?

    From a TCM perspective, honey is also sweet and may exasperate the cough further and the point of this particular recipe is to really add salt (see above benefits of salt) to neutralize the sweet and really work to soften the sore throat.  If you really want to add honey, do it in small amounts (orange itself is quite sweet already) and do it once it’s cooled to around 60C as any benefits of honey and the degradation of the product.  I don’t add this to boiling teas at all.

    Will it help relieve the sinuses?

    This is not a recipe to help clear sinuses or relieve phlegm and dispel moisture from the body.  Ingredients that will do this include dried tangerine peels, apricot kernals, or barley, to name a few.  A few like this Snow Pears and Chen Pi (Tangerine Peels) for Coughs and Congestion, will also do the trick.  This recipe is really for soothing and healing the sore throat and some cough relief, albeit quite topical.  

    Can I drink this every day?

    Yes, if you’re feeling the sore throat and cough for a few days, you can definitely consume this daily.  The key is that it’s not completely cooling and is warmed enough it doesn’t create excess yin or yang in the body.  The only thing I would caution is the sugar consumption because an orange still does contain sugar, except we’ve neutralized it with salt, but the calories are still there.

    How do I know if it’s working?

    This is the age old question of Traditional Chinese Medicine (and even for any holistic approach to wellness).  Trust.  LOL.  Western medicine is usually more symptom based whereas Traditional Chinese Medicine takes a Confucianism (source: Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine: encouraging the twain to meet).  So long as you keep to the understanding and practice of achieving and restoring balance in the body, mind, and spirit and that everything is connected, it’s working.  You can read up on “Getting Started with TCM in Soups“.

    What’s the best salt for this?

    I’m using kosher salt here, but you can use table salt or Himalayan salt as well.  The point is to be using any type of natural salt to neutralize the sweet taste (and nature), but the calories as the same. 

     

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    Learn more about how these types of teas and soups can help improve your overall blood circulation and how you actually know that it's working?

    It's not a perfect science (still working to perfect it), but I'd say the methodology and thinking is sound 🙂

    Would love to hear your thoughts!

     

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    Cough Reducing and Lung Nourishing Tea

    Cough Reducing and Lung Nourishing Tea

    Cough Reducing and Lung Nourishing Tea

    Soup Name:

    Cough Reducing and Lung Nourishing Tea

    Traditional Chinese Name:

    止咳茶 (zhǐké chá)

    Nature:  Slightly warming

    Taste: Sweet

    For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

    I was naughty this weekend and took a ride in -5C (probably colder with wind chill) weather and will likely be chastised by my Chinese doctor because “he told me so…”  LOL.

    Here’s why.  When there is exposure in both cold and windy conditions (which are usually yin pathogens into the body), there’s a possibility that the body isn’t strong enough to fight it and then the body becomes imbalanced and you have excess yin in the body.  Symptoms include pale complexion, having a wet, pale, tongue, runny nose, phlegm in the nasal passages and when it gets bad, it’s phlegm in the lungs.

    For me, I have a slight dry cough (no phlegm in the lungs), but severe runny nosy and phlegm in the nose, including cold limbs.  You can play with the balance of monk fruit vs tangerine peel depending on where the phlegm is.

     

    What’s involved?

    Prep time: 20 mins

    Cook time: 15 mins

    Total time: 35 mins

    Serves: 3 cups

    Ingredients
    • 1 quarter of dried monk fruit shell (reduce this if you’ve got more phlegm and increase the tangerine peel, this ingredient is great for dry cough)
    • 1 piece of dried tangerine peel (reduce this if you’ve got a very dry cough and increase the dried monk fruit)
    • 4 slices of fresh ginger
    • 2-3 pieces of rock sugar (to taste)
    • 4 cups of boiling water
    Cooking Instructions
    1. Soak your tangerine peel in warm water for 15 minutes and scrape off the extra flesh from the skin (as it’s bitter).  This is an optional step.
    2. Add all the ingredients (except the rock sugar) into a pot (or a stove safe tea pot)
    3. Boil on low-medium heat for 15 minutes
    4. Before serving, add in the rock sugar and allow that dissolve fully
    5. Serve and enjoy!

    TIP:

    • Monk fruit (or dried luo han guo) is really good for that dry, dry cough.  You’ll know because the cough sounds hollow and there’s no phlegm.
    • Tangerine peel is best suited if everything is phlegmy and helps dry the dampness in the body.  You’ll know this because the cough has phlegm and the lungs feel and sound congested.
    • Do consult your doctor if you’re not sure about your condition.  This is not a substitute for any medical advice.

     

     

    The monk fruit!  This is the slightly less dry version.  You’ll notice it’s more green and less brown.  This one is a little more expensive, coming in at $2 CAD per monk fruit.  You’ll also notice a thin layer of sugared coating, so it is a bit sticky to touch, but that’s just the sugars of the fruit on the skin.  The great thing about the greener version is that it isn’t as pungent or sweet, so you can use half in a soup to give is just enough of that flavour.  If it’s the heavily dried version, I will only use a quarter in 3L of soup water.  This is also great in teas!!  

    Thank you so much to the community for sharing your comments and progress!

    ❤️❤️❤️ 

    This is a recent instagram follower who used the monk fruit (or luo han guo) tea to help with a dry cough.  And yes, this is your definite go-to ingredient for dry cough, where dried tangerine peel is your go-to for the more phlegm and wet cough.

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