Heat Clearing Sugarcane and Water Chestnuts and Imperatae Root Herbal Tea
Soup Name:
Heat clearing sugarcane and water chestnuts and imperatae root herbal tea
Traditional Chinese Name:
竹蔗茅根馬蹄湯 (zhú zhè máogēn mǎtí tāng)
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A traditional Chinese drink which helps cool the body, reduce heatiness, and clear phlegm and unwanted body fluids. It’s natural sweetness is perfect for hot summer days and this can be drank cold or hot. It is commonly found as a drink in most herbal dessert shops and is even bottled commercially.
The key to this heat clearing tea is the water chestnuts. I don’t use them often as this version also uses corn, carrots, or corn silk, but I’ve kept it simple for heat clearing only. The water chestnuts are a very cooling ingredient and combined with the imperatae (or mao gen) root, is extra potent to clear excess yang.
What’s involved?
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 30 minutes
Total time: 40 mins
Serves: 6 bowls
Ingredients
4 x 1-foot length pieces of sugar cane
1 bunch of Rhizoma Imperatae
12 fresh water chestnuts
Cooking Instructions
- Prepare your sugar cane by chopping into smaller 2-inch length pieces
- Rinse, peel and rinse the water chestnuts. You can cut into bite-sized edible pieces if you also like eating them.
- Add to cold water into your soup pot
- Boil on medium heat covered for 30 minutes
- 5 minutes before serving, drop in your rock sugar.
- Serve and enjoy!
Any benefits?
- This is a great tea for BBQ’ing or hotpot as it’s cooling and removes heat from the body, especially the stomach
- It can served as a tea or soup
- It is vegetarian, so perfect for any soup or tea drinker
- This can be drank cold or hot (you’ll often find this as a heated drink served in the streets of Hong Kong)
- You can make a big pot and store in the fridge for one week. Just be sure to let it sit to room temperature or heat up before consumption
- You can have a few variations of this soup or tea depending on ingredients at home (such as adding sugared dried winter melon, water chestnuts, or simply using sugar cane and imperatae)
For videos, visit us on YouTube.
Fresh water chestnuts are crispy, firm, and high in water content. They don’t have the best storage life, so keep them in the fridge as much as you can. As the water chestnuts “age”, they’ll breakdown and become starchy, have a crumbly texture, and lose it’s moisture content. Which in turn, makes your soup or tea cloudy, which is still OK, as long as the water chestnuts still hold some of their firmness.
