10 Essential Chinese Herbs in my pantry (Part 2) | A Chinese Medicine Practitioner's Guide

Want to have a Chinese herbal pantry that you can go to whenever you need something to help to boost your energy, to relax you, to help you to sleep better, to warm you up, clear heat, or to relieve minor symptoms such as common cold in the early stage, dry cough or dry skin, dry mouth? In this two-part video series, I recommend 10 herbs for your own Chinese herbal pantry for everyday healthy living. You have learned these 5 herbs in my last video and today I'm going to explain the next 5 herbs. Hi everyone, welcome to Chinese Herbal Pantry. My name is Shirley. I'm a Chinese Medicine Practitioner and a Western Medicine Pharmacist in Australia. This channel is about how to improve general well-being and to relieve minor symptoms by using Chinese herbs at home effectively and most importantly, safely. This is a two-part video series which I share my favourite 10 herbs that I always keep in my own pantry. They frequently appear in my videos here in this channel. You might be quite familiar with them already if you have been following me for a while. In the last video, I shared these 5 herbs which include goji berry, ginger, red dates or jujube, chrysanthemum flower, and the Chinese yam, Shan Yao. If you haven't watched the previous video, make sure you check it out after this video. For today, I'm going to share the next 5 herbs with you. So I'm going to put this aside. It looks like a lot here but actually this for me is one lot. They are the variety of mushroom or dried mushroom you could keep at home and there's 4 here. So there are totally 5 here. So the 5 herbs that I'm going to share today are the lotus seed, the tangerine peel, the drop-tear seed, the lily bulbs, and a variety of mushroom. As I mentioned in the previous video, I will go through the properties of these herbs and their functions and how to use them in everyday life very quickly assuming that you already have some basic understanding of traditional Chinese medicine. Please do your best to read more and learn more yourself with some credible websites and Chinese medicine books. Learning Chinese medicine is a lifelong journey. You can go to my website. I have a list of book recommendations for you or if you are not the kind of people who can read by yourself and you need more support and want to go deeper and learn how to create and modify a recipe that best suits you and you want someone that can hold your hand along the way and someone that you can ask questions to, please consider joining my online course. For those who are interested and have been thinking, I hope you won't miss out this opportunity as I don't teach my course too often. In the online course, you do get a lot of support from me and you will have a weekly live Q&A session with me. So if you are interested to learn more about it when I launch the course, don't forget to join the waitlist through this link here and when I launch it, you will receive an email to inform you about all the details. Also, I have created a beautifully designed mini booklet for you for all these 10 herbs. I include all the important information in there. So if you want a copy of that, go to this link or go to my website to grab a copy and make sure you keep this little booklet in your pantry so when you slowly fill up your herbal stocks in your pantry, you know what they are, why they are there and how they use it just by going through my booklet. So now let's dive in in the next five herbs. Okay, I already explained the first five ingredients here. So for today, the sixth ingredient that I recommend to keep it in your pantry is the lianzi, the lotus seed, in Cantonese. The thermal property of lotus seed lianzi is neutral. It is classified as an astringent herb. I know this is another little weird traditional Chinese medicine function or jargon in Chinese medicine. In Chinese medicine, an astringent herb means that it is a herb that is able to stabilize and bind the essential matter in our body. So the traditional Chinese medicine function of lianzi, lotus seed is able to tonify our Chinese medicine spleen. Hence, it can astringent diarrhea, meaning through strengthening our Chinese medicine spleen, which usually is referred in the western medical term could be like our digestion. That's why by strengthening it, it can help to relieve the diarrhea caused by the weak digestion. Number two, the second function of lotus seed is can nourish our Chinese medicine heart. Hence, it's able to relieve poor sleep with vivid dreams, palpitation with anxiety. Lotus seed is widely used in both savory and sweet soup. It's often paired with lily bulb, which is the herbs I'm going to explain next. They work well together to calm our mind, to help us to sleep better, relax us. So this is a combination that I use in this sweet soup to help to relieve our anxiety and also to calm our mind, to help us to sleep better. And the lotus seed is often used in sweets and pastry. So for example, one of the most famous one is actually the mooncake. Inside mooncake, the filling is made from the lotus seeds. So the seven herbs that I recommend you to keep it in your pantry is the lily bulb, the mandarin is baihe, the Cantonese is bakheb. The thermal property is cool or cooling is classified as a yin tonic. The Chinese medicine function is able to nourish our yin, to clear heat from Chinese medicine lung. And sometimes we can use it to clear to or to relieve dry cough or dry throat. It also can clear heat from Chinese medicine heart. That's why we can use it to calm our spirit or our emotion. And this is the reason why we often use it to relieve insomnia with dreams, mild palpitations and to relieve restlessness caused by the heat because it can clear heat too. As already mentioned, it's often combined with lotus seed. We use it together a lot. We use it a lot in savory and sweet soup for all the above functions. If you can find a fresh form of lily bulb where you are, you can also stir fry with other vegetables too. When I was living in Shanghai, China for three years, when the lily bulb is in season, that's one of my favorite vegetable stir fried. Okay, the eighth ingredient to keep it in your pantry is the tangerine peel. The thermal property of tangerine peel is warm and is classified as a Qi-regulating tonic. According to traditional Chinese medicine function, it means that it can move your Qi. When you feel stuck and stuff, you can use this one to kind of help to regulate the Qi movement in the body. It can also support digestion. It's used to clear dampness and to clear phlegm. Actually, this is one of the ingredients that is already in our everyday life or our cuisine, both in the West and the East. It is quite common. I mean, when you go to the Chinese dim sum, this one is often in the beef mince ball. They add it there to cut the grease to reduce the heaviness of the meat. And we also use it a lot in some of the bean soup, like the red bean soup. Similarly, it's there to help to relieve the heaviness and also to relieve the bloating that caused by the bean. So that's one way to use it. In the Western cuisine, although they don't look exactly the same, but the concept is the same. When you make a very sweet dish or very sweet dessert, sometimes they will add a little bit of lemon zest, which is like a citrus peel. So it helps to cut the sweetness and create a more balanced dessert or dish. So it's the same concept. It's already in our everyday cuisine. And for Chinese medicine, it is considered a herb that has medicinal and health benefits. I make a video that has tangerine peel in this video here. It's to help to relieve overacting. So as I mentioned before, the Chinese medicine function is to support our digestion. It also can help to clear dampness and to clear the phlegm. So you can add it to your herbal tea when you have mild cough that have a bit of phlegm. So this is how you could use it. And so that's why that's the beauty of learning the basic functions and how to use them in your kitchen, because they're probably already in our everyday life. You just don't notice them. But when you know it and use it in the right place, you are maximizing the health benefits of it. So the next ingredient is the Job's Tear Seed. It is the Chinese barley. So be aware it's a Chinese barley. There are many different types. Specifically, it's the Job's Tear Seed that has more medicinal function. So Job's Tear Seed is slightly cold. In Chinese medicine, it's classified as a dampness clearing herb. The Chinese medicine function is able to clear heat, to clear damp heat. It's able to relieve mild diarrhea, mild swelling or feeling of sluggishness and heaviness of our body. This happens especially during hot and humid weather. So it's very easy to use. You can just boil in water and drink it as a drink. Or you could put it in your congee, savoury or sweet soup. In Malaysia, many hawker stores or restaurants, they serve the barley drink because of the hot and humid weather there. Okay, last but not least is to have a variety of mushroom and fungus in your pantry. This day, we all know about the health benefits of mushrooms. Many science and trials already prove that. And some companies even make use of this and make mushroom powder supplements like Lion's Mane. I've seen it in my health food store near me. They grind it into powder and then you can eat it like supplement. I mean, some of the trendy health video probably ask you to pop some of this into your protein drink or your smoothie or your fruit juice. So Chinese medicine or Asian community have long known the health benefits of mushroom and fungus. And we actually have a big variety of it in some of the more traditional or old Chinese herbal shop in Hong Kong or in Asia in general. They might even have a special section just to sell you a big variety of mushroom and fungus. So these are the ones that I keep at home. And mushroom and fungus are actually stable ingredients in Chinese cuisine. So what I have here, I have the standard dry Chinese mushroom. This is kind of a special species. It's not the dark one. This is the expensive one with the more whitish top. And we have the black fungus. I haven't really used this in my channel. But looking back, if you check this video where I make the steamed Chinese herbal chicken, you can add the black fungus in there to add a different types of flavor and also add a different texture because this can be crunchy and quite fun to eat. And if you follow me long enough, you know the snow fungus is a yin tonic to help with dry skin to help and nourish our yin. And this is liamine, which I already mentioned some of the company make it into like mushroom health powder. This you can put it in your savory soup. You can also stir fry with other mushroom or stir fry with your vegetables. So these are the cheap mushroom or fungus that I keep that you can use for your cooking and your diet. So not even to mention the more expensive one and make very famous recently in the West such as the reishi mushroom, the cordyceps. They now consider these are like another type of superfood or adaptogen that can help to regulate our nervous system and things like that. But there are cheap ones that you can also use on your everyday diet. And don't forget you can also get other type of fresh mushroom in your standard groceries like the button mushroom, the shiitake mushroom, oyster mushroom that you can get it for fresh. These are just some that is dry that I have it in my pantry so I can add it when I don't have access to the fresh one. Add a variety of them. Learn some simple recipe with mushroom and fungus, especially those that you're not too familiar with. It's fun to add some new thing in your cooking and you also have the additional health benefits. So you can check out some of the videos on my channel that I use the snow fungus. Okay there you have it the 10 herbs in your pantry. Okay like I say you don't have to get them all at once. Just slowly build up your pantry stocks or choose the one that suits you, the one that you like, the flavor. I mean some people probably don't like fungus or mushroom yet or it's acquired taste. But do slowly add bit and pieces and see how you respond to it. With these 10 herbs in your pantry, you can have something to help you with sleep, to relax you, to enhance your qi, your immunity. There's something to clear heat, to clear humidity and the mushroom is great for general well-being and the goji berries for eye health. So you can't have everything that you need for everyday minor symptoms, for everyday healthy living in your pantry. So why not to slowly incorporate some of them. Some of them are so tasty like the goji and the red dates. And a very important note for everyone who is watching here is the power of Chinese medicine lies in personalization and the synergy effect of the herbal combination. Unlike the western medicine, it is very rarely that we use one herb for one particular condition. It's often through our learning and understanding of the whole presentation and the herbal property that we use a few herbs together tailored for that specific needs for that particular person. To understand the underlying cause and to take the necessary steps to prevent instead of purely relying on herbs. It's also very very important in Chinese medicine. So all these will help but they are only the beginning. If you want to go deeper and to learn how they combine together to understand the Chinese medicine theory behind and the Chinese herbal medicine theory behind, do check out my online course when I teach it. That's when I will go much deeper with my students there and you not only just learn 10 herbs, you learn nearly 40 herbs. I believe about 40 herbs in my course and you will learn the recipe, a bit more complex recipe and how to modify them for your own needs. So I hope to see you in my course if you're interested but otherwise these 10 herbs will get you started. So thanks again for watching and I hope you find this video interesting and I hope you learn a lot in this video. If you like it, don't forget to give it a thumbs up so to let the algorithm know and let me know that you enjoy videos such as this and please share with your families and friends if you know they're interested in Chinese medicine who use Chinese herbs a lot at home for cooking and for diet so they know it properly. It's not just throwing things without understanding what they are for and whether they actually can use it safely. So thank you again, I'll see you in the next video. Bye!