Mutton Soup with Ginger and Angelica sinensis

Today’s mutton soup with ginger and angelica sinensis comes from a great Chinese medical book Synopsis of Prescriptions of The Golden Chamber  that was written by medical scientist Zhongjing Zhang in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is a prescription and also a diet. The Chinese also call this kind of food a medicinal diet（药膳). I have excerpted the original text as follows  and  try to translate them into English in order to make it easier for the readers to understand what it does:

• 寒疝，腹中痛及胁痛，里急者，当归生姜羊肉汤主之。

A person with acute abdominal pain, pain in one or both flanks, inntestinal cramps that are both painful and the urge to poop, is treated with mutton soup with ginger and angelica sinensis.

• 产后腹中㽲痛，当归生姜羊肉汤主之，并治腹中寒疝，虚劳不足。

Postpartum abdominal cramps in women are treated with mutton soup with ginger and angelica sinensis  , and it can also treat acute abdominal pain, physical weakness, and overwork.

当归生姜羊肉汤方- Mutton soup with ginger and angelica sinensis prescription

当归三两    生姜五两     羊肉一斤-  45 gram angelica sinensis     75 gram ginger      250 gram mutton

右三味,  以水八升，煮取三升，温服七合，日三服。-Boiling these three ingredients and 1.6 liters of water until they become 600 ml of water. Serve warm and 140 ml once, three times a day.

Although the ancient unit of measurement was different from today, we can do it proportionally. The ratio of angelica, ginger, and mutton is 3:5:16. Today’s recipe I did not strictly follow the recipe, I adjusted it according to the taste. If you want to treat a disease, it should be carried out in strict accordance with the proportion.

The author also pointed out that ingredients and other traditional Chinese medicines can be appropriately added or subtracted for different symptoms. This mutton soup should be regarded as the first way for Chinese people to nourish the body and keep healthy in winter.We can see how famous and important it is !

Among the ingredients, only angelica sinensis is medicine, mutton and ginger are the food we often eat. Then I also write down the medicinal properties of Angelica sinensis.

Name: Angelica sinensis

Nature: warm

Flavors: sweet, acrid

Special Properties:

circulates blood, clears damp, eliminates toxins, disperses wind, resolves dryness, reduces swelling, alleviates bi syndrome.

Some friends may ask whether this traditional Chinese medicine can be eaten casually. What I want to answer is that natural plants are far better than those synthetic chemicals.

After I came to Guangdong, I learned more about the wide application of traditional Chinese medicine in diet from the herbal tea and cantonese soup made by Cantonese people. For Cantonese, these are as common as breathing and cannot stop.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese medicine and diet are of the same origin. Chinese food culture cannot exist independently of traditional Chinese medicine（TCM).  Because of the strong cultural heritage of traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese people have known how to incorporate traditional Chinese medicine into their diets to treat and prevent diseases, as well as maintain health care since ancient times. If you come to China, you will find that every household, from big cities to small villages, has its own Chinese medicine-based diet. Traditional Chinese medicine is naturally incorporated into various diets and plays an important role in safeguarding health.

As a Chinese, I have always been proud of my country’s traditional Chinese medicine culture. It advocates not to cure the disease that has already occurred, and to cure the disease that has not yet occurred, emphasizing that prevention is better than cure. As a country with a population of more than one billion, traditional Chinese medicine and traditional medicated meals are very important to the health of the Chinese people. What I lament is that Chinese medicine is very fast and effective, but there are no more skilled Chinese medicine doctors to use it to help more people. There is no large-scale spread of the COVID-19 in China this time, and the patients can be treated in time, and traditional Chinese medicine has contributed.

I seem to have a lot of words today. This is what I think of from a medicinal soup. The advantage of writing a blog by myself is that I can write a little more. :)

Cooking Notes:

• Blanch lamb before cooking in pressure cooker.
• You can also cook lamb in a regular pot, but it will take a little longer.