When we were in Malaysia, there is a favourite stall that we like to visit in Petaling Street that sells Lou Han Guo Herbal Tea. There is always a line up at this stall.
Out of the blue, Ben asked me to make him some Lou Han Guo Herbal Tea. Coincidentally, I have all the ingredients (I think) to make this drink. I had bought the ingredients but just did not get down to make it. Perhaps, I can sense his wants.
The Lou Han Guo Herbal Tea has a natural sweetness and fragrance to it. This makes a good summer drink when it’s chilled.
This is an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding Lou Han Guo.
The fruit extract is nearly 300 times sweeter than sugar and has been used as a natural sweetener in China for nearly a millennium due to its flavor and lack of food energy, only 230kcal/g (960 kJ /100g) compared to granulated sugar which has 387kcal/g (1,619 kJ/100g). It has also been used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Ingredients
- 1 Lou Han Guo
- 1/2 package of Sweetened winter melon
- a handful of dried longan meat
Source: Suanne
for 4 litres of herbal tea
Instructions
 Rinse the Lou Han Guo. |
 Crack the Lou Han Guo so that it can release it’s sweetness. |
 Quick rinse the sweetened winter melon.
When I bought the sweetened winter melon from a herbal shop, I was told that it should be greenish in color. There is a lot of faux product out there made with daikon (white carrot). The herbal shop claimed that they had to return a whole batch of such faux item once. |
 Quick rinse the dried longan meat. |
 Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add in all the ingredients. I added some rock sugar for extra sweetness, optional. |
 I used a thermal pot to cook the herbal tea. I find the thermal pot very energy saving as I need to boil the tea on the stove for only 15 minutes. Then I place the inner pot into the thermal pot and leave it for few hours. |
 The tea will continue to cook in the thermal pot as it’s temperature will be retained in the thermal pot. It only looses about 1 degree for every hour. It is a good kitchen equipment to make soup.When I bought the thermal pot, it came with a recipe book but unfortunately, it’s in Japanese. If anyone of you have some thermal pot recipes to share, I will be most grateful. |
Hi Suanne
I usually make this in summer. Do you think this is any good for cough? Just started coughing yesterday. Must have eaten too much heaty stuff over the past weeks.
I forgot to say that I make this drink using shredded fresh dong qua. The drink is delicious with it.
Hi Lissa, according to Wikipedia, one of the traditional uses of Lou Han Guo is for chronic cough.
>> Take a piece of the fruit, cover it with water and leave it to boil. Drink the resulting liquid twice daily.
Thanks. I just dumped what I had to boil and have been drinking it before dinner.
Hi Suanne,
Where did you buy the Lou Han Guo. Thanks.
CL, you can buy them from any chinese herb shop. Even T&T sells it.
Thanks! will be making this soon.
can you use the winter melon package you got at kuo hua?
With the addition of longans, wouldn’t this be Air Mata Kucing?
Hi TimeToChow, I’m adding winter melon and longans because that’s how the popular stall in KL made it. Actually, you can just make the Lou Han Guo drink by itself.