So today we’re going deeper into the world of peach resin, the collagen-packed Chinese beauty secret that I’m excited to bring to more people.
If chicken noodle soup is penicillin, then Chinese soups are a veritable pharmacy.
Though you might think of egg drop or hot and sour soup, there’s a whole world of medicinal Chinese soups that aren’t about taste, but are rather about healing.
Walk into any Chinatown and you’ll see these apothecaries filled with herbs and roots and fruits and fungi. A holistic doctor will examine you, diagnose your ailment, and will prescribe and measure out ingredients for a tea or soup.
Lest you think these are super obscure ingredients, a couple traditional Chinese medicine ingredients are now in the mainstream including ginseng and goji berries.
My grandmother is an expert at medicinal soups and since I’ve been a child, every time I visit her I must have at least one bowl of soup. Two, if I want to make her happy. She has liver-cleansing soup, a soup for my dad’s high blood pressure, a soup for my cousin who just had a baby… even a soup for your ovaries which my brothers weren’t allowed to drink (but my dad was?).
So to start we’re going to stick to peach resin’s roots with a traditional Chinese preparation. Before we go crazy with smoothies and energy balls and what not, I think it’s important to understand how the ingredient is mainly used.
Then we can get crazy.
Traditional Beauty Soup - Poached Pear and Peach Resin
I drink this soup as a snack or even a post-dessert-dessert. :) I don’t want to get too bogged down by going into the benefits of every ingredient since I want the peach resin to be the star. But suffice to say, every ingredient in a Chinese medicinal soup has a purpose.
This recipe can also be made with papaya, though you should shorten the poaching time. Traditional peach resin soups will also include a clear wood ear mushroom called “snow cloud”. I’ve left that out in an effort to keep this recipe as approachable as possible, but feel free to add it if you can find it.
5 cups water
2-4 tablespoons rock sugar — depending on your sweetness preference (feel free to use any sweetener you like)
2 very ripe Bartlett pears, cut into ½” pieces
¼ cup goji berries
2 cups prepared peach resin (see here for preparation instructions and see here for where to buy)
Bring water to a boil and add rock sugar. Lower heat and simmer until totally dissolved, then add goji berries and pears. Simmer on low for 5-6 minutes, then add peach resin and simmer for an additional 3 minutes.
Serve warm or cold.
