Heat Clearing Sugarcane and Water Chestnuts and Imperatae Root Herbal Tea

Heat Clearing Sugarcane and Water Chestnuts and Imperatae Root Herbal Tea

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)

 

For videos, visit us on YouTube. 

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

 

Cooking Instructions

  1. Prepare your sugar cane by chopping into smaller 2-inch length pieces
  2. Rinse, peel and rinse the water chestnuts.  You can cut into bite-sized edible pieces if you also like eating them.  
  3. Add to cold water into your soup pot
  4. Boil on medium heat covered for 30 minutes
  5. 5 minutes before serving, drop in your rock sugar.
  6. 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. 

For other variations of this tea:

Sugar Cane and Imperatae Drink

 

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Arrowroot and Water Chestnuts Vegetarian Soup

Arrowroot and Water Chestnuts Vegetarian Soup

Soup Name:

Arrowroot and Water Chestnuts Vegetarian Soup

Traditional Chinese Name:

馬蹄粉葛湯 (mǎtí fěn gé tāng)

 

This soup is great for heated bodies and sore throats. It is mildly cooling, but extremely soothing with it’s sweet taste and smoothness.

Since it’s meat free, it’s completely oil free and by adding more carrots, you can sweeten it to the point where you can consider drinking it cold (definitely tasted amazing cold because it really helped cool my poor, fiery throat).

You can consider adding other ingredients as well, such as corn, onions, pumpkin or even meats (pork, chicken or fish are all good meats to “salty” up the soup).

What’s involved?

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 1 hour and 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour and 45 mins

Serves: 6 bowls

Ingredients

Cooking Instructions

  1. Peel and cut arrowroot into large cubes
  2. Wash & peel water chestnuts
  3. Wash, peel and cut carrots into large cubes
  4. Wash and prepare dried tangerine peel (by scraping it with a flat knife on both sides)
  5. Boil your soup water and when it boils, add all the ingredients together
  6. Boil on high for thirty minutes and reduce to medium boil for another hour
  7. Serve and enjoy!
  8. Can be served cold, so you can refrigerate before serving

Any benefits?

  • Helps eliminate sore throats and heaty bodies
  • It is a mildly cooling soup
  • It’s quite diverse in that you can add meats (to make it more salty or just add salt in moderation) or keep it a sweet, cold drink and refrigerate prior to consumption
  • Excellent for young children

For videos, visit us on YouTube. 

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Traditional Chinese Name: 祛濕清熱冬瓜湯 (qū shī qīngrè dōngguā tāng)

Introduction:

A must drink for the hot, stuffy summers.  It helps cools the body, reduces heatiness and eliminates overheating.  While mildly sweet and light to taste, this is a common and very popular soup in the Cantonese soup repertoire.  There are a variety of ways to make this soup, but this is the most basic.

Ingredients:

1 pound of fresh pork shank
1 large slice of wintermelon
5-6  honey dates
2 tablespoons of hyacinth beans
5 g of dried lily bulb (or 5-6 pieces)
20 g of fu ling
10-12 lotus seeds
2-3 L of water

How do I prepare it

  1. Blanch fresh pork shank in a pot of boiling water
  2. Boil your soup water
  3. Wash and cut wintermelon into cubes (separate skin from meat) – skin is still added to soup
  4. Rinse all other ingredients in warm water
  5. Once soup water boils, add all the ingredients together
  6. Boil on high for 30 minutes, reduce to a simmer for another 1.5 hours
  7. Serve and enjoy!

Any benefits?

  • Helps reduce heatiness in the body
  • Eliminates excess heat and helps cool the body

Any precautions?

  • Women in their first trimester of pregnancy should avoid as it is an extremely cooling soup and may cause contractions
  • Melon soups are best consumed within same day as keeping melon soups overnight or over an extended period will make the melons sour (and so will your soup!).