This morning, I woke up with a dry and itchy throat with an on and off dry cough, a bit of sore throat, some shallow breathing, and a feeling of overall cold. This is what I call temporary yin deficiency (of the lung). I was riding the day before in 3C and with prolonged lung exposure to a cold environment, the onset of yin deficiency was topical and pretty quick to show itself. Which means, I could also address it right away!
Lung yin deficiency shows up as dry and fire in the lungs, which is sometimes mistaken for excess yang. It can feel ticklish in the throat and just not comfortable to speak.
This sweet tea will help cool and moisten the lungs and throat, calm the dry cough, and restore balance between yin and yang in the body. Keeping monk fruit and dried chrysanthemum flowers in my pantry are great because I can quickly throw together a tea
Add all the ingredients into a ceramic or glass pot
Pour in 4 cups of cold water
Set to high for 10 minutes (or until it begins to boil)
Cover and reduce heat to a low boil
Boil for an hour
When you’re ready to serve, you can drop in the rock sugar and mix until dissolved or add honey after you’ve served (as not to breakdown the honey in the boiling water)
Strain and serve. Drink hot! Enjoy!
Any benefits?
This soup is perfect for nourishing and tonifying the lungs
It helps with cough, especially a dry cough where there is Yin deficiency (or appears as heaty)
It’s a sweet tea that is perfect for the whole family
It’s a cooling tea and helps cool and lubricate the lungs
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!!
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It started with a cold. My whole family had it, being passed from one person to the other. My symptoms were light though, feeling primarily fatigue throughout a two week period, until the end. I developed this mildly itchy (but highly irritating) cough that just wouldn’t go away, even with cough syrup. So I went to find my Chinese doctor and herbalist who asked me a few questions, asked me to show him my tongue and recommended this mild tea designed to squash that pesky cough.
A majority of the ingredients are cough attacking ingredients and readily found at your wet marts, herbalist, or dried food stalls. They are primarily leafy and stem based, and not a cooling tea at all, but does address heatiness in the body.
Normally, anything cooling actually stimulates coughing more, so these are warm ingredients that are paired perfectly for anyone who wants to try an alternative solution to the drowsy cough medicine. This tea is mild enough for kids, mild enough to drink back to back, slightly warming, but not heaty, and perfect for vegetarians. On top of the dried herbs, chuck in a slice of ginger for good measure!
This tea is already slightly sweet (due to the sugared dried kumquat) and quite soothing to drink. No sugar needed!
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This soup or tea is completely designed for the dry, cold, dry, cold, super dry, or super cold winter conditions. It’s a vegetarian (meatless) moisturizing tea suitable for the whole family and tastes super yummy.
You can consider adding fresh snow pears or fresh apples to sweeten it further, just take caution with the amount of rock sugar you add. It’s a combination of the all the ingredients that help being moisture to the lungs, body, skin and internal organs. You can drink this to your heart’s delight!
Do note that snow pears are mildly cool ingredients, so not recommended if you’re in confinement or need to avoid cooling ingredients.
What’s involved?
Prep time: 15 mins Cook time: 1 hour Total time: 1 hour 15 mins Serves: 2 cups
Ingredients
2 dried snow fungus, soaked and cut into quarters (removing the center, see video below)
Soak the dried snow fungus in warm water until it is completely covered. Let it sit for about 15 minutes until it has become soft and large. Using a pair of scissors, cut it quarters while removing the hard yellow middle.
In a separate bowl, soak in warm water the dried tangerine peel for 5 minutes.
Once the tangerine peel softens, using the face of a knife, scrape off the darker side of the peel (this is the bitter part) just slightly.
Start to boil your tea water
When the water boils, add all the dried snow pear, apricot kernals, tangerine peel, dried dates, dried lily bulbs together.
Boil on medium heat for 1 hour.
In the last 5 minutes, drop in the rock sugar and mix.
Serve and enjoy! Ideal to drink hot in the winter time!
The ingredients are pretty common in Hong Kong or your local Asian supermarket. And you can buy them in bulk and store them in a dry, sealed container for many months – or in the fridge for even longer.
Preparing the Snow Fungus (video)
For snow fungus, you’ll need to soak them in warm water for some time – pretty much until they explode into giant balls. Normally, people don’t eat the hard middles, but you can still cut it out and put it in with the soup. The tricky thing with snow fungus is that it dissolves into the soup. This means, the soup gets thicker and stickier the longer you boil it with snow fungus (scientifically speaking is that the viscosity of the liquid increases). You can remove the snow fungus halfway through if you don’t like it so thick.
A delicious, naturally sweet tea or drink that really does help relieve that pesky sore throat or dryness that is developed over the cold winter months. It’s pretty surprising how dry it can get in Hong Kong during the cold winter months and without central heating, I sometimes turn on the heat (for my kids OK?) and then your whole body becomes a dry, shriveled prune. On top of that, if I don’t turn on the heat, I sometimes wake up with a terrible, stinging sore throat. So either way, an excellent supplement of water for my body and moisture for my lungs.
Introduction: An extremely easy and common Chinese tea/drink that is one of the traditional cooling teas. It relieves heatiness, expels heat from the body and is overall healthy for the body. Although slightly bitter in after taste, adding some honey or rock sugar can help make this tea delicious. There are a variety of recipes for ginseng tea with varying Chinese herbs, but this is the most basic.
What Ingredients are required?
1-2 pieces of dried ginseng (pending how bitter you’d like it) 1 tablespoon of honey 2-3 L of water
How do I prepare it?
Cut up long ginseng piece into slices (for releasing more ginseng flavor into the tea)
Add ginseng to water and boil covered for 30 minutes
Strain and add honey
Can be served chilled
Another way to prepare this tea is without boiling. You can simply steep the ginseng like normal tea leaves in a cup of hot/boiling water. Stir to distribute flavor and then add honey or rock sugar.
Any benefits?
Excellent for removing heatiness from the body
Great anti-oxidant and anti-carcinogenic properties
Extremely easy to make
Can help reduce fatigue, lower cholesterol and prevent infections
Any precautions?
Ginseng is a cooling food and should be avoided in women who are in their first trimester or in postpartum (confinement)