Healing Herbal Soups: Boost Your Immunity and Weather the Seasons with Traditional Chinese Recipes: A Cookbook

I along with my family are a big fan of Chinese herbal soups . Since I prefer to make soup my myself , being non Chinese it was very difficult to understand , source and mix ingredients , to make soup at home . This book is amazing and made everything so simple even for someone like me . The recipes Are simple and very easy to understand . You just throw in a bunch of ingredients into a pot, boil and that’s it! It could have been really difficult for me to gather ingredients from different sources but the good news is, if you do not understand Chinese and don’t live near a Chinatown the authors have started an online store to purchase ingredients for soups at healingherbalsoups.com. I bought few of them and It come in herbal packets and are arranged by the soup. Super easy!!! I have attached few pictures of pouches I got . Lastly, My favorite part of the book is the herbal encyclopedia because it has photos, and the names of the herbs which I had never seen in my life before in English and Chinese so you can just take it into the store and point to that entry.

Love this book. Very informative with set up easy to understand and to follow recipes. It provides a list of common Chinese herbal soup ingredients along with excellent colored pictures. Best book on herbal soups for all four seasons and also immunity soups and drinks that will soothe your soul and boost your immunity.

I haven’t been able to read it through, but can’t wait to leave a review for this book - it’s beautifully made and so informative. The names of the ingredients are listed both in the English and Chinese. Love it and can’t wait to try the recipes!

I'm not into Chinese Medicine, so I skipped the first 60ish pages. I care about real recipes that haven't been altered or dumbed down for the masses. This books seems to deliver real recipes, based on how many of them included ingredients that perplexed me, as well as ingredients that elude me. And that makes me think they are authentic. One recipe called for nearly a pound of crocodile meat. Not happening. I mean, I know where I could find one, but I don't want to be banned from the zoo for the rest of my life. Two seahorses. More attainable, there are pet stores that might have them. But one of them needs to be male, the other female. I have no idea how to a sex a sea horse. That same recipe also calls for a sandworm. I've read Dune, there is no possible way I could kill a sandworm, nor do I have a large enough pot to cook it in. Overall, I'm quite happy. It is unlikely I'll ever have the ingredients to make many of the dishes, but just reading the recipes is enough.

I never really understood TCM until reading this book. I probably "still" don't understand it, but I understand more than I did before. I'm also amazed at how perfectly it sums me up, addresses my issues and explains away my food cravings. My grandmother used to make healing soups when I was younger but I didn't appreciate them until I grew up. Some soups don't sound very tasty, but there are a wide assortment in each season, and I look forward to exploring them. I just wish I could find their website.

I seriously LOVE this book. I've learned so much from it. After buying this one, I went on to purchase other Chinese soup books too. But I always come back to this one. Even after making soups for over a year, I still rely on it whenever I go to a Chinese grocery store. There are just so many ingredients with different Chinese names (and I’m Chinese myself. I can read and write Chinese!). I took off one star because of the ingredient quantities. Honestly, some of the recipes call for way too much of certain ingredients. As I’m writing this, I’m soaking 5 oz of dried conch in preparation for a soup. After doing some research, I realized 5 oz is a lot for just 8 cups of water (which reduces to about 5 cups). Most recipes use much less. But oops, I'm already soaking them. There was another recipe that called for a huge amount of snow fungus. Back then, I didn’t know any better, followed it exactly, and ended up with a ridiculous amount of it in my soup. After some trial and error, I found that using just 1/4 of the amount the book suggests works way better. From now on, before I make any soup, I will double-check online (or ask my mom) to make sure the quantities aren’t too wild, and I adjust as needed. But I gotta say, this is still the best Chinese soup book I’ve ever come across. I only have the Kindle version because I like having it on my phone all the time, and I really hope the authors will eventually review the ingredient amounts and revise them if they turn out to be off. I think the Kindle version updates if book is revised (?).

I had a lot of health problems and I used a few recipes from this book that I kept using over and over because my body will slowly get better over time. I had to cut out hanging out with people that had bad eating habits and consistently use these recipes over and over to see a change. It took a good 6 months to really make a huge difference in my overall health! It really did improve my energy levels and I saw a positive change in my overall mood. But it takes consistency over time, otherwise it will not work for you. Its not that the book does not work, its you did not work the book for long enough. That's on you :)

My girlfriend is getting into TCM, and this is a great starter book with recipes that we are excited about.

Interessanter als die teilweise sehr ausgefallenen, teilweise immer gleichen (Schweinefleisch und Aprikosenkerne) Zutaten fand ich die Zubereitungsweise mit dem Blanchieren oder Separatvorkochen von Fleisch und Gemüse. Warum es keine Suppe ohne Fleisch gibt, ist schwer verständlich. Manches leuchtet ein ( kein Ginseng bei ‚Hitze‘ Symptomen), manches weniger (summarische Angaben zu Akupunktur und Schröpfen), aber davon handelt das Buch ja auch nicht.

Helpful

If your someone who does not eat pork you should know majority of the recipes contain pork which is highly disappointing I wish there was more diversity. I do however like how they explained yin and yang and how to eat according to it. I also liked the list of different Chinese medicinal ingredients

Growing up with Chinese herbal soups in our home, I was looking for more recipes to supplement the ones passed down in my family. This is a great resource to not only learn more about each herb and what it does, but what herbs and soups work best for your body type. It's a great read and very easy to understand for both beginners and those who have beginner-intermediate knowledge in the area. I especially loved the photos (though there are some mistakes here and there - recipe says one thing, photo shows another) as they make it clear which herb is what. We have a book from a different author to complement this one too - it goes more into depth about each herb (how it's grown, which part of the plant is used, what it is for, etc) and holds more tonics and herbal health remedies.

Such great book!