Wood Ear & Red Dates Tea
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.
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 90 mins
Total time: 1 hour 45 mins
Serves: 3 cups of tea
- 20 of pitted red dates
- 150 g of dried wood ear
- 5 cups of water
- Soak your dates and wood ear for 10-15 minutes in cool water
- Boil your soup or tea water
- When the water boils, add all the ingredients together and boil on a medium boil (covered) for 1.5 hours
- 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.
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Can i drink it whole day like water for the first 1 week after delivered ?
Dear Elin, that’s exactly how you should drink it! You can also drink the black bean and rice water in the first few days as well. Hope this helps and congrats! Lisa
Is the quantity of wood ear in its dry or rehydrated form? 150gr seems to be a lot!
Hi Jenny! I made a big batch this time around I think. It’s in it’s dry form that I weighed it. But use what you feel is necessary. I actually took the wood ear and chopped them up to eat as well as this is great for reducing blood pressure and amazing for the heart! Hope this helps! Lisa
Hi thanks so much for this recipe! I’ve got a question, if I’m cooking this on slow cooker, will the recipe still be the same? Or should I just reduce the water to 1 cup? Thank you!
Hi. I know this is an old post but if I can’t find pork Shank can I use beef soup bones?
Hi Katelyn, this is designed more as a confinement tea, so if in the case if you can’t find pork shank, perhaps go vegetarian would be best. The reason is because beef is considered not so great of a healing meat and it’s a bit different in terms of flavours and uses in Chinese soups. The Chinese tend to use more pork and less beef. To be honest, I haven’t tried beef in these combinations! My first recommendation would be to go vegetarian then. Let me know how it goes! Lisa
I made the vegetarian version as I didn’t have pork shank, it is delicious! Perfect for postpartum.
How do I find what soups are good for seniors? I have some health issues. This is new information for someone who’s not Asian. I’m not very techie. Thank you in advance for your help.
Hi Mana! I think the key to Traditional Chinese Medicine and soups is the conditions that you have, rather than age. It really depends on overall health of the body, balance of yin and yang, condition of tongue, skin, the whole body as one connected unit. What are you noticing that you’d like to explore? What are the health issues? We may need more specifics… and can give some general guidance directionally. Lisa