Grandma's General Health Soup

One of the benefits of growing up in a large family is the variety of food you get at dinner every day.
When my grandparents lived with us, my grandma would make a different soup every day just because we can finish 1 big pot of soup every day.
This was the one soup she should make at least once on a weekly basis because each of the 4 herbal ingredients in it is good for a different part of the body!
She refers to it as upkeep of the body.

The herbal ingredients in this soup are simple ingredients that do not require you to go to a Chinese Dr to get exact measurements. So no need to worry about that.
My grandma makes soup by eyeing the amount of ingredients, so I took that and put together some more precise measurements for this post. :)
It's actually quite easy to make once you get use to it. Essentially you through everything together, bring to a boil and simmer for 1.5 hrs and you have soup.

Of course, there's many variations of this. This is the most basic version that my grandma taught me how to make.

Fox nuts - High in anti oxidant (my grandma refers to this one as good for skin)
Lotus Seed - good for kidney and spleen
Lily Bulb - good for lungs and spirit
Dioscorea Opposita - spleen, stomach and lungs

Grandma's General Health Soup

Ingredients

• 56g Fox nuts 芡實
• 60g Lotus Seed 蓮子
• 56g Lily Bulb 百合
• 4 to 5 strips of Dioscorea Opposita 淮山
• 1 to 1.5 lbs of Pork Bones (the more you add the more flavourful the soup)
• 3-5 Honey Dates
• 1 dried Tangerine Peel 果皮 (it's not just any tangerine apparently...)
• 4 to 5 L of water depending how strong and condense do you want the flavour to be
• Salt to your preference

Directions

1. If you do not want cloudy soup, pre-treat your pork bones by blanching it in water and remove the "scum" from the water before you proceed forward.
2. Bring water to a boil. 
3. Add in the pork bones.
4. Let the water come back to a boil, then add in the rest of the ingredients.
5. Once the water is at a rolling boil, then turn the heat to low and cook it on low heat for half an hour. Depending on how much water you use, you might need to cook it at medium low heat to keep a very light boil. A little more then a simmer but not a full out boil.
6. Find the honey dates and squash them so it lets the flavour out! Continue to cook it for an hour other.
7. Add salt and you're ready

Notes: A little salt will help bring flavour out. My mother in law doesn't like to use add salt so she makes a very concentrated soup instead with lots of ingredients to make up for the lack of salt.

Categories: Chinese, Chinese Soup, Herbal