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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Sugarcane

Ingredient Name:  Sugarcane, sugar cane

Traditional Chinese Name: 蔗 (zhè)

What is this?

  • A type of grass that measures 2-6 feet tall
  • Stalky and thick (varying in 1-2 inches in diameter) that is high in sugar content
  • Produced mainly in Brazil, India, and China
  • Used to make sugarcane juice, refined sugars, syrups and ethanol

How do I prepare it?

  • Sugarcane can be used raw directly in soups and drinks
  • Chop into usable lengths (and halve if necessary)
  • Wash with warm water before usage

Where can I buy this?

  • Fresh sugar cane is common in both Asian supermarkets and wetmarts in Hong Kong

What is the cost?

  • Sugarcane is relatively affordable – with a pack of 10 x 1-foot long canes costing around $10 HKD

Any benefits?

  • Complete 100% natural sugars (sweetener that is unrefined)
  • Ideal in treating sore throats, colds and flus
  • Contains only simple sugars and therefore can be consumed by diabetics safely
  • Sugarcanes are rich in carbohydrates and helps strengthen heart, lungs, kidneys, eyes and brains

Any precautions?

  • Moderation of consumption should still apply as heavy consumption can lead to weight gain and type 2 diabetes
  • Raw sugar cane juice is also said to contain a high content of bacteria (mainly in Asia) due to how it is stored.

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