Wood Ear & Red Dates Tea

by | Oct 16, 2012 | Confinement Soups, Postpartum Soups | 10 comments

Soup Name:

Wood Ear & Red Dates Tea

Chinese Name:

木耳红枣茶 (mu er hóng zǎo chá)

This tea is warming in nature and sweet to taste.

 

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This warming tea has so many amazing purposes!  

The key highlight of this tea is the wood ear.  Wood ear in Traditional Chinese Medicine is known to reduce hypertension (lower blood pressure), support blood flow and circulation, tonifies and nourishes the blood and Qi, and alleviates coughs, moistening the lungs and removing phlegm.  

To make this super potent, after you boil the tea, remove the wood ear and slice into small pieces and serve as a snack (or with the tea).

I’ve also made wood ear salads, which allows you to still consume wood ears with more diversity in your diet!

 

For post partum:

This tea I drank as a confinement tea and within the first 0-5 days of confinement to help eliminate the lochia. It’s a simple tea with 3 ingredients (the meat is optional if you’re vegetarian) and very easy to make. It’s a sweet, slightly tart tea and must be drank hot/warm. It’s one of the better tasting teas I know available for confinement! You can boil a whole big batch for 5 days worth, refrigerate and then reheat when needed or boil fresh batches everyday. It is recommended to drink 1-2 glasses a day (depending if you’ve got other teas or soups already filling your tummy!). Do not add additives like sugar or salt. Keep it clean, light and natural.

What’s involved?

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 90 mins

Total time: 1 hour 45 mins

Serves: 3 cups of tea

Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
  1. Soak your dates and wood ear for 10-15 minutes in cool water
  2. Boil your soup or tea water
  3. When the water boils, add all the ingredients together and boil on a medium boil (covered) for 1.5 hours
  4. Serve hot/warm directly as is

Some tips!

  • You can pre-soak the wood ear first thing in the morning.  This will soften until you need to boil them.
  • Be sure to buy and use pitted red dates as the seeds are quite fiery (not in a good way).  Some red dates come pre-seeded, but if not, you can use a sharp knife and remove them or halve them first and remove.

For videos, visit us on YouTube.

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