Yen Can Cook: Winter Melon Soy Bean and Lentil Soup

The recent sweltering weather can really make us feel grumpy, exhausted and irritable. It can upset our body’s balance and cause us to feel off-centered.

When the mercury rises, you probably want to reach for cold beer, ice-cream and frozen desserts. Sadly, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory, those are bad choices as when you ingest any food that is cooler than your actual body temperature, your body has to create more heat to warm up the food in order to digest it. This added heat will increase your body temperature.

Chinese believe that drinking warm soup is a good ways to dispel inner heat and toxins, because it boosts perspiration that takes toxins away through sweat. In TCM, foods and herbs have different properties that can either cool down or warm up your body temperature. One way to cool down is to eat foods that induce urination as this clears heat from your body and winter melon is one of the food which is good to increase the metabolism, reduce internal heat and expel inner toxins. 

Winter melon 冬瓜, is a mildly “cold” food in TCM that can travels through the lung, large intestine, small intestine and bladder meridians. It can help dispel pathogenic heat and dampness, nourish lungs, dissolve phlegm, promote urination and relieve thirstiness. Dampness 湿热 is an ancient concept in Chinese medicine, to put it simple, dampness simply refers to water retention.

Today’s boiled soup recipe is adapted from <Miraculous Soups> using a few new ingredients that I’ve never used before but can be easily get from supermarkets or traditional markets.

Ingredients (Serve:3-4)

300g winter melon, clean the skin and remove the seeds and core, cut into big pieces

600g pork ribs

75g soy beans

40g lentils

20g Dang Shen/Codonopsis 党参

75g Huai Shan/Chinese Yam 淮山

2500ml water

Salt to taste

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Step 1: Put the pork ribs into a pot of water and bring to a boil, to remove blood and impurities. Remove, drain and set aside.

Step 2: Rinse all ingredients (except salt) and set aside.

Step 3: Put all the ingredients into a pot and add in water until enough to immerse all the ingredients. Bring to a boil and lower the heat and let the soup simmer for 2-3 hours.

Step 4: Add salt to taste & serve.

HAPPY COOKING!

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