The great thing about these Chinese herbal soups is that we can get the great benefits of herbs while eating something tasty. These soups are great just before a meal to help us prepare our stomach for digestions and efficient absorption of nutrients. It can also help those who are on a diet to eat less and stay healthy, as the low calorie soups can fill up a part of the stomach.
Si Shen Soup (四神湯) "Four Immortal Soup"
Si Shen Soup is a soup that is composed of four main herbs and other additional ingredients. These four main herbs include:
Fu Ling (茯苓 Poria),
Yi Yi Ren (薏苡仁 Job's Tears),
Qian Shi (芡實 Gordon Euryale Seed).
These four ingredients are said to help relieve dampness and calm the mind. So for those of you who have poor appetite or are experience fatigue, it may be caused by "too much dampness." Other health benefits of Si Shen include anti-aging, improving memory, boosting immunity, warming the body, and strengthening the kidney.
If you feel like making a stronger recipe for those symptoms we can add:
Shan Yao (山藥 Huai Shan 淮山),
Hong Zao (紅棗 Jujube),
Dang Gui (當歸 Angelicae Root),
Hua Qi Shen (花旗參 American Ginseng).
These herbs help to strengthen the stomach and improve circulation throughout the body.
When making the soup of 4-6 Servings the ingredients include:
You choice of herbs from above at 10g each.
300g of Pork (the less fat the better)
3 slices of Ginger
1 Tblspn of White Pepper.
1 mL Rice Wine
Salt to taste.
5-6 Cups of Water.
Cooking Instructions:
Step 1: Cleaning the pork.
Bring a pot of water to a boil (just enough water to emerge the pork in) and put the pork in for about 3 minutes just to clean off the unwanted taste from pork. Throw the water away and rinse the pork.
Step 2: Put everything in water and boil.
Add together the 5 cups of water, herbs and pork and turn the fire on High. Once the water is boiling allow the herbs to cook slowly for 1.5 hours by turning the fire to Low.
Step 3:
Add salt and some rice wine before serving.
Step 4:
Enjoy!
