Taking a moment?  Want something calming and soothing?  Try this sweet and sour chrysanthemum and roselle honey tea! 

I love the sweet tart flavour of this tea and the calming benefits it brings.  This tea is perfect for hot summer days, cooling the body if you’re feeling too heaty, and calming the spirit and mind.

It’s a yin enhancing tea, so if you’re feeling too heaty, unsettled, or too dry, you can take this to relieve the excess heat and also moisten your lungs and stomach.  

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon of dried chrysanthemum flowers
• 4-5 dried roselle flowers (or hibiscus flowers)
• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 2 cups of water

Cooking Instructions

1. Add all the dried flowers together with the 2 cups of water and boil in a stove top safe tea pot (either glass or ceramic) on medium heat for 5 minutes or until the tea begins to colour a beautiful dark pink (this is the the hibiscus flower color coming out into the tea)
2. Set aside for a few minutes to allow the tea to cool before adding honey (as heat will destroy the nutritional properties of honey)
3. You can add boiling water 2-3 times before the flavours run out (which is why I love these dried flowers)

Benefits

• This tea is cooling and helps relieve heat in the body (excess yang or yin deficiency)
• It helps calm and soothe the body and mind
• Hibiscus is actually a hang over tea!
• These ingredients store comfortably in room temperature for months.  Just be sure they are in dry conditions.
• Both these dried flowers are very affordable and are commonly found in supermarkets, herbal shops, and even western herb shops

• Honey is a neutral ingredient that is calming, relieves pain, and detoxifies the body.  Be sure to let the tea temperature drop a bit as honey loses its beneficial properties in hot temperatures.

• Roselle, also known as hibiscus, is a calming and cooling herb that actually aids in coughs and hangovers!  It’s got slightly sour tones, so compliments nicely with honey.

Precautions

• These are cooling ingredients, so if you’ve got yang deficiency, I would add a slice of ginger to balance it out
• Generally, Chinese medicines are boiled in ceramic or glass pots (and not steel or metal pots), this is so that the ingredients don’t react with the metal.  I like using a stove top safe glass like this one.  

Monk Fruit and Chrysanthemum Flower Herbal Tea (for dry coughs and yin deficiency)

To answer your questions on what equipment I’m using, I’ve built a section here where you can find and explore what I’m using to make soups.  Ingredients are a little harder, but I will do my best as I source them around.  However, you can always message me on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or Facebook, and I will reply and try to point you in some direction!