Green Papaya, Fish & Dried Octopus Soup
Green Papaya, Fish & Dried Octopus Soup
Tea Name:
Green Papaya, Fish & Dried Octopus Soup
Chinese Name:
木瓜魚湯 (mù gua yú tāng)
Nature: Warming
Taste: Sweet
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A popular and very common soup for confinement, but not limited to this special group of ladies. For confinement, you must use GREEN papaya (ie: raw, raw, raw – smoking green). The dried octopus helps in milk production as well as adding some flavor to the soup. Use small fish where possible (to limit the exposure to mercury) and setting the soup overnight in a thermal pot really helps bring out the flavors. You can make a big pot and drink for about 2-3 days (while reheating it). This soup generates a very rich, milky broth that is super nutritious, delicious and suitable for the whole family. Another key ingredient for confinement is the ginger – don’t discount the power of ginger!
Green papaya is an amazing antioxidant and has anti-inflammatory properties that strengthens the spleen, counteracts dampness, and supports circulation. Green papaya is also amazing in removing toxins and kills free radical particles from the body (hence the anti-oxidant and anti-aging). While it’s amazing in soups, it’s not quite so sweet as their red family members and sometimes carries a tart and sweet taste together. You’ll find this ingredient in salads a lot as well! But I do love eating it as part of the soup and meal!
Cook time: 1 hour 30 mins
Total time: 1 hour 45 mins
Serves: 8 bowls of soup
100 g of ginger, sliced thinly
2 fresh fish, halved (for this recipe, I used 2 fresh Bartail Flatheads)
2 large green papayas
1 dried octopus, quartered
1 tsp of oil (to fry the fish & ginger)
2 L of water
salt to taste
- Cut and soak the octopus in a bowl of warm water
- Thoroughly wash and clean the fish
- In a shallow pan on medium heat, add oil and ginger and when the oil is hot, add fish
- Fry the fish with the ginger on both sides until golden brown
- Remove from stove to let cool
- Boil your soup water
- Wash and peel papaya skin, cut into large edible portions
- When the water boils, add in fish (inside a soup baggie to prevent the bones from disintegrating into the soup), fried ginger, octopus and papaya
- Boil on medium heat for 1.5 hours
- Put into a thermal pot to keep warm or for re-boil later
Tips for this soup:
- Be sure to use smaller fish (to reduce the amount of mercury in the soup). Larger fish tend to have more mercury.
- Be sure to use a soup bag if you’re using fish in your soups. I’ll usually pan-fry and then drop that into a fine mesh soup bag so that one, clean up is super easy, and two, the bones don’t disintegrate all over the soup. Some people do love eating the fish as part of the meal, so you can always extract that directly from the soup.
- Optional to keep the papaya skin on as well so that the papaya itself doesn’t soften and disintegrate too much
