Daikon radish, aged tangerine peel & poria tea
A sugar-free daikon tea, fragrant with aged tangerine peel and naturally sweet — clears stodginess and leaves you feeling lighter.
- 35 min
- Serves 2
- Simmer
- Easy
Why it suits you: Phlegm-Dampness brings phlegm, a stuffy chest and a heavy body, and afternoon sweets or milk tea make it worse. This sugar-free radish tea resolves phlegm and dampness and aids digestion; cooked with ginger it is not cold, and it will not dry you out in Cold Dew.
Method
Prep 10 min · Cook 25 min- 1Soak the tangerine peel until soft and scrape off a little of the white pith. Rinse the poria. Peel the radish and cut into thick slices.
- 2Bring everything to the boil in 800 ml water, then simmer for 20 minutes until the radish turns translucent.
- 3No sugar needed. Strain the tea into a flask, and eat the radish slices as a snack alongside.
Cautions
- Radish moves qi downward; if you take ginseng or other qi tonics, leave a few hours between them and this tea.
Chef's tips
- Choose a heavy daikon with smooth skin for a sweeter tea. Aged peel need not be pricey — three- to five-year-old peel is fragrant enough.
The TCM view
Daikon is pungent, sweet and cool; it sends qi downward, resolves phlegm and aids digestion, and cooking softens its coolness. Aged tangerine peel is pungent, bitter and warm and dries dampness; poria is sweet, bland and neutral and drains damp; ginger is pungent and warm. Inspired by the classic Er Chen formula: it resolves phlegm without chilling and drains damp without drying.
