Alicia hasn’t been eating so well lately – ok, she picked up a bit since Saturday – so I decided to make this si shen soup. It is well-known for improving appetite and is commonly given to children with poor appetites. I think the main herb that does this is fu ling as research has shown that it strengthens the body, improves body weight and improves appetite. I wouldn’t encourage parents with big babies/toddlers or babies/toddlers with an already hearty appetite to serve up this soup to your darlings as si shen soup is probably the equivalent of the Western appetizer.
After sieving out the herbs:
Alicia guzzled down this 100ml of soup at one go last night! 😀
The 四神:
Traditionally, si shen soup is cooked with these four ingredients plus lean pork or pork ribs. To make it more flavourful for my toddler, I have included some ingredients and here’s sharing the delicious modified si shen soup recipe!
- 5g huai shan (淮山)
- 10g dried foxnuts (qian shi) (芡实)
- 20g fu ling (茯苓)
- 40g dried lotus seed (lian zi) (莲子)
- 250g pork rib
- 2-3L of water
- 4 dried figs (无花果）
- 3 candied dates (金丝蜜枣)
- 1 big red apple (cut into quarters)
- Rinse the chinese herbs.
- Blanch the ribs and bones.
- Place all the ingredients into the soup pot and bring to a boil.
- Simmer on low heat for 3 hours.
- Sieve the soup and serve only the soup.
Click the link for the full list of soup recipes (with thumbnails).
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I love this soup! I ate almost everything up except Fu ling
Glad that you love it! 🙂
Hi Angie..
One soup pot of water is roughly how much ? 2 litres or 3 litres ??
Hi, it’s about 3L. Sorry I haven’t got down to editing all my old posts to make it more specific! 🙂
Thanks Angie for your fast response.
I say , I must try all your herbal soup recipes…being a mum of 2 and still able to keep so ‘fit’ and ‘youthful’….the herbal soups must have helped a lot.
Hope you will add more recipes in times to come.
Grateful reader.
Haha… we don’t drink herbal soups very much actually, but we do drink the normal Chinese soups at least 4-5 times a week. The old posts and recipes were more for my own documentation, hence the lack of precision as compared to the newer ones. Hopefully I’ll have time to get down to editing those! Thanks for reading!!