Buddha’s fruit herbal tea

A bout of cold-flu-bug has been hovering over our household lately. Nathan had suffered from a very bad cough and runny nose and my mum has been battling a case of the sniffles. As for me, I’ve been plagued with a couple of extremely painful and persistent mouth ulcers.

I was taught that all these type of symptoms are associated with a traditional Chinese concept known as ‘heatiness’. Pretty much every type of illness and health issue in the entire traditional Chinese world is supposedly linked to the balance of ‘heaty’ and ‘cooling’ elements in the body.

To counteract the symptoms of heatiness and avoid any resulting illness associated with this condition, we are told to avoid ‘heaty’ foods and to drink ‘cooling’ herbal drinks.

One of the most popular ‘cooling’ herbal remedy is Loh Han Kor tea.

Loh han kor or Buddha’s fruit can be found in the dried herbal section at  any oriental store.

The fruit consists of a solid outer shell, with a soft furry texture inside. Although it may not look like it, the fruit is very very very sweet. In fact, it is almost 300 times sweeter than sugar!

To make a basic loh han kor drink, all you need to do is break open the fruit and throw the whole thing in (shell and all) into 1-2 litres of water and simmer it for around 45 minutes. The sweetness of the tea can be very strong, so you can dilute it slightly with more water as needed.

If you’d like to get a little fancier, here is a simple recipe to make loh han kor herbal tea…
(recipe adapted from Kuali.com and messywitchen.com)

Ingredients
1 whole dried loh han kor or Buddha’s fruit (gently crushed open)
8-10 dried red dates or jujubes
6-9 dried longan*
80 grams rock sugar
2 litres water

(*Longan can be eliminated if you want the tea to be more cooling as longan fruit is considered to be heaty)

Place all ingredients except longan into a pot, bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer gently for about 45 minutes. Add longan in at this point and simmer for a further 15-20 minutes.

Serve hot or cold.

Happy Friday!

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