What pot to use to cook Chinese herbs? Do I have to wash the herbs before cooking?

Today I'm going to answer two questions from the subscribers in this channel or followers in my other social media platforms. First question is what pot do we use to cook Chinese herbs or does it really matter? Second question is do we have to or need to wash the Chinese herbs before cooking? Hi everyone, welcome to Chinese herbal pantry. If you are new here, my name is Shirley. I'm a Chinese medicine practitioner and a pharmacist in Australia. So let's start with the first question, what pot does it matter? Yes, it does matter. It's actually one of the very important aspects of how you cook your Chinese herbs. Let's talk about what pot not to use. Things like this beautiful cast iron pot. It comes in various different colors, pink, orange, red, green and I have the purple one and I love it. It looks so pretty and it's become very popular this day and it's very tempting to want to use it to cook Chinese herb and you cannot because this is cast iron. So we think any metal material such as iron, aluminium or copper might have chemical interactions with the Chinese herbs, especially when the herbs are in the pot for a long period of time. Usually we need to cook Chinese herbs for an hour or two. So we worry the chemical interaction between the metal and the Chinese herbs may cause changes in the medicinal properties of the Chinese herbs. So no, we do not recommend to use any aluminium, copper or iron pot. The only exception is stainless steel. So stainless steel pot is comparatively stainless steel pot is a little bit more stable or more inert. It just means that it won't, ideally it won't have the interaction between the pot and the Chinese herbs. So yeah, so that's I kind of bring out all my pots from my kitchen to show you. So this is a stainless steel. I got this from my mum. My mum gave it to me when I went overseas to study. I kind of carry with me all throughout the world wherever I move to. I have the full set. Thank you mum. And you probably have seen this pot before. This is a ceramic Chinese herbal decoction pot. So any ceramic, clay pot, earthware, cookware, they are safe because we consider all these materials are more stable and the heat can distribute very evenly too. So when the material is stable, it will not have the interactions or the chemical interactions with the Chinese herbs. If you go to any Asian grocery store, you will see a big variety of them. The herbal decoction one, you see the clay pot to cook dishes. You see a bigger, taller soup pot that we use to cook a lot of Chinese herbal soup. So those are quite affordable. So if you think that you start to cook more Chinese herbs at home, like Chinese herbal soup, which I will start to start a series to teach you how to cook that, and maybe it's good to invest no more than a hundred dollars, most of them that I see. So these are okay. And I've also got questions on, people ask me, what if the kitchen at home is not guest stove? It is those heat conductions hot plate? Because this doesn't conduct the heat that way. So you probably can't use earthware like that. I did some research and I found something like this. So what it is, is although the outside coating is aluminum, I believe this is aluminum, as you can see at the bottom is designed for the induction hot plate. However, the inside, as you can see the coating, inner coating is actually, it's a ceramic coating. So when you put the herbs in, it's only in touch with the ceramic layer, inner layer. So although the outside layer is aluminum, then I think this is okay to use. The whole idea is to avoid that interaction between the Chinese herbs with any aluminum, iron or copper. So this is okay. It's like I'm selling pots here. Okay. So now let's go to the second question. Do we have to wash our herbs before cooking? The strict answer is no, you don't have to. Of course you will wonder, ah, they're not clean, they're dirty. There's a lot of concern. So let me go through it in more detail. So if you go to see a Chinese herbal medicine practitioner, they give you a big pack of Chinese herbs that might consist of at least 10 or even 15 of herbs. So when you open it, it's really hard to tell because some of them come in a very small pieces, very small little pieces. And secondly, the herbalist might even grind some, some of the herbs into more like a powder form. In those cases, of course, please don't wash your herbs. Because if you wash it, you will wash away some of the important ingredients in there. And then by the time you cook it, you won't get the full benefit of the whole formula. Usually we would just go straight into the decoction pot like this one, and you can soak it in the water for a little bit, and then you start cooking it. After you finish cooking, just make sure that you don't drink the bottom, the settlements at the bottom, just drink the clearer liquid on the top. That's one way. And what if you only use the herbs to herbal soup or herbal dessert soup, like one of those that I have taught you how to make. So with those, when you open the pack, you can see clearly each of the herbs in a complete form. They're not in powder form or very small slices or very small pieces. If you are very particular, like me sometimes, sometimes I do, and I do rinse it really quickly under running water with a colander. Second way that you can do is actually you pre-soak the herbs before cooking. When you soak it, all those impurities or dust during the transport or the processing process, it will settle at the bottom. And then you just take it out and then you can cook. So that's one way. And how about herbal tea, right? Like one of the videos that I showed you recently, the tea for relaxation. I received questions to say, do I have to wash the flowers before I brew the tea? As you can see my video, I actually don't wash it. I blend them and then I just pop it into my teapot. I know it's one of our nature. We get so used to have to wash everything. And especially during the pandemic, you probably worry more. If you can't resist to wash it, just make sure you have a look at your flowers or your tea. Similarly, if they come pretty complete in their own complete form, it's not all little small pieces. You can just run it through really quickly with water before you brew the tea if you worry. But otherwise, if you buy good quality herbs or good quality flower, they should be all right. Just like the blended tea. I don't think you wash it before you brew them, right? So similar idea. I think I answered all the questions already. Unless there's some specific herbs or flowers or whatever that I think need to have different treatment, then I will tell you in my video when I make those tea or soup or herbal dessert soup. Okay, I think that's all. And so thank you again for watching. Thanks for supporting this channel. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. And please like the video if you do find the video helpful and share with your friends and family if you think that they're also interested in this topic. And I also recently launched, not that recent anymore, probably more than a month, my website. You can go to check it out. And there are a couple of resources for you that you can just download, like the Spring Wellness PDF and also 11 Health Tips. If you would like to keep those as a copy, I try to make it as beautiful as possible. And then the Winter Wellness PDF should be coming up soon, especially the Northern Hemisphere, Asar, to go into winter. And I know Europeans and some American cities might have also more restrictions due to the virus. So please take good care and download those resources if you find them helpful. The 11 Health Tips are quite a complete guide, although Every Healthy is very short, but give you some idea how you can look after yourself, not just for the physical body, but overall. And eventually I'll put up all my recipes in my website, like a blog. I'll slowly work on it. Thanks again. So I'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye.