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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Papaya and Snow Fungus in a Pork Herbal Soup

Papaya and Snow Fungus in a Pork Herbal Soup

Papaya and Snow Fungus in a Pork Herbal Soup

Tea Name:

Papaya and Snow Fungus in a Pork Herbal Soup

Chinese Name: 

木瓜雪耳豬骨湯 (mù gua xuě ěr zhū tāng)

Nature:  Warm and ideal for moisturizing the body and lungs, supporting digestion and soothing the stomach.

Taste:  Sweet

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

I simply love snow fungus!  And this combination is a beautiful one in that at times, you’ll find this a dessert and other times, a soup!  I know, super strange.  But the combination of papaya + snow fungus can swing both sweet and savory! Which makes it so amazingly diverse!

What makes this combination so amazing?  It’s a combination of nourishing and lubricating the lung, stomach, and spleen with the papaya and the snow fungus.  This soup can soothe and aid in digestion, heal the stomach and stomachaches, and support lung treatment in coughs and dryness.  And of course, the added benefits of the plant collagen that is found in snow fungus (which, by the way can hold 500 times its weight in water!).  Reference this interesting article in the National Library of Medicine regarding snow fungus and its composition of collagen.

This is an easy to make, nutritious soup that is packed full of Vitamin C and beta-carotene. It is deliciously sweet and refreshing and ideal for autumn or winter days. You can use chicken to make it more warm and also add a variety of other ingredients to make it a meal.

Regardless of weather, this soup is designed to be moisturizing (from the inside) and perfect if you’ve got dry skin, dry lips, dry tongue (this is one key indicator from a TCM perspective).  In fact, some Chinese people claim that it’s part of their skin care regime to be consuming foods of this nature.  Bird’s nest is another one of those delicacies that call into this category of “self care”.  And you will often here Chinese ladies (and mothers) tell you how great this recipe is to stay looking “young”!

 

What’s involved?
Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 1 hour 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour 45 mins

Serves: 8 bowls of soup

Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
  1. Rinse and soak dried snow fungus in a bowl of enough water to immerse it in for about an hour (or until soft)
  2. In a separate pot of boiling water, blanch pork bones for 5 minutes, set aside and cool
  3. Boil your soup water
  4. Wash and cut papaya into large edible cubes
  5. Using scissors, cut out the middle of the snow fungus (the hardest part) and cut the other portions into edibles pieces
  6. When your soup water boils, add in the pork bones, papaya and Chinese herbs.  I made this soup in the morning and set it into the thermal pot for the whole day, coming back to the soup in the afternoon and then dropping in the snow fungus to cook for another 2 hours.  Depending on how soft you want the snow fungus, I’d say at least an hour.
  7. Boil on high for 30 minutes and reduce to medium heat for another hour
  8. Serve and enjoy!
Tips and tricks:

  • Here’s a quick video on how to prepare snow fungus for Chinese soups
  • Be sure to cut out the hard middle, or buy snow fungus that doesn’t have the middle and is broken up
  • I like to use red papaya instead of green papaya for this version (green is more traditionally known to support milk production in post partum Chinese soups)
  • You can opt to keep the skin on the papaya during soup boil so it doesn’t disintegrate and break down into the soup
  • Snow fungus cooks and softens quite quickly.  Depending on how soft you’d like it, you can drop it in about 30 minutes before you serve, although I like it super soft and some of it dissolved into the soup (for that collagen benefit), so I drop it along with all the other ingredients.

 

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Chinese-Styled Cream of Corn Egg Drop Soup

Tea Name:

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Chinese Name: 

玉米湯 (yù mǐ tāng)  

Nature:  Warm

Taste:  Sweet, Salty

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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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Korean dashi soup (base) for making any soups!

Korean dashi soup (base) for making any soups!

Korean dashi soup (base) for making any soups!

Tea Name:

Korean dashi soup (base) 

Nature:  Cool

Taste:  Sweet, Salty

For more videos, you can follow us on YouTube.

I learned this from a Korean Auntie that I have in Toronto, which has a huge and beautiful Korean community in the area I live in.  And even if you go to the Korean supermarkets nearby, you’ll find a lot of these aunties combing the fresh goodies and meats and ask them!!  The knowledge in there is amazing!

I actually learned this because I wanted to learn how to make a Tofu Kimchi soup and Koreans will start with a soup base first and then span out to the various types of Korean soups available such as: spicy beef soup with vegetables, any kimchi soup, kimchi tofu soup, any tofu soups, rice soup cake, and more!

 

There are also a few variations of this Korean dashi, but the key really is the anchovies and seaweed.  Some will add fresh onions, fresh white radish, fresh garlic, fresh scallions, or fresh ginger or dried shiitake mushrooms.  Dashi is actually a Japanese name for soup broth and is also recognized in Korean cuisine as dashi.  It’s so commonplace that it’s the equivalent to chicken broth in powdered and canned form.  You can also buy dashi in both prepared powdered and liquid form so you don’t have to prepare it yourself and have readily available soup at your disposal!

What’s involved?

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 10 bowls of dashi (soup broth)

Ingredients
  • 5 L of fresh water
  • 25-30 dried anchovies, heads removed
  • 1 large sheet of dried kelp 
  • half fresh white radish, with skin peeled and thinly sliced
  • optional, 2-3 fresh slices of ginger (which can help remove some of the fishy flavours and scents from the soups – this is a Chinese trick that we use for fish soups, too!)

     

    Cooking Instructions
    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.

    I made this kimchi and soft tofu soup served on rice for dinner after making my dashi and it was amazing! 

    There are so many soups now that you can extend from your dashi soup base, changing up the protein or vegetables or spice levels!

    The great thing with the dashi is that I made a small pot of this kimchi and soft tofu soup for 1 person (using this super cute ceramic pot) and customized the level of spicy, kimchi, and other ingredients.  So I basically made 3 of these little portions for the family to pick and choose from!

    For example, the kids didn’t want that much spice or cabbage, so I added some bak choy (OK, my Chinese fusion again), slice sausages, and some instant noodles!  You can totally get creative with these little pots!! 

     

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    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. 

       

      CHECK OUT OTHER SIMILAR HEALING HERBAL SOUPS

      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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      FOLLOW US AND SHARE.

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