Lung-Qi Tonic Soup with African Sea Coconut, Tiger Milk Mushroom, and Snow Fungus

Why people make this soup

During a flu outbreak, beyond washing hands and avoiding crowded places, building up the body’s internal resistance is one of the most sensible things you can do. This soup is designed for exactly that: a gentle but effective lung-tonifying brew that Nourilo recommends especially for children who get sick often and for elderly people with weaker constitutions. The two signature ingredients are African sea coconut — a real sea coconut from a specific African species, quite different from the common dessert coconut — and tiger milk mushroom (hu ru ling zhi), a prized medicinal mushroom from Southeast Asia. Both are well-regarded in traditional Cantonese food therapy for their ability to strengthen lung qi, ease coughs, and help clear phlegm. Together with snow fungus, lily bulb, apricot kernels, figs, and pear, the soup is soothing, mildly sweet, and nourishing.

Method

1. Rinse the pear (or apple), remove the core, and cut into chunks.
2. Soak the snow fungus in water until expanded and soft; remove the tough yellow stem and break into smaller pieces.
3. If the sweet apricot kernels have skins, briefly blanch in boiling water and slip off the skins.
4. Rinse and slice the dried figs.
5. Soak the lily bulb briefly, rinse.
6. Place all the ingredients into a pot with 2.4 L of water.
7. Bring to a boil, then simmer for about 1 hour until the liquid reduces to approximately 1.2 L.
8. If making the sweet version, add rock sugar to taste near the end of cooking. If savoury, season with salt.
9. Serve warm.

Nourilo’s Tips

This soup is good both sweet and savoury — as a sweet soup with rock sugar, or with lean pork or even a whole pork lung added for a more medicinal effect. African sea coconut is genuinely expensive (HKD 150–170 per liang at time of writing) and often counterfeited — buy from a large, trusted Chinese herb shop. Tiger milk mushroom should be purchased whole (unsliced) and have the shop slice it for you, so you can verify its authenticity. If African sea coconut is unavailable or too expensive, substitute with 38 g of southern and northern apricot kernels (nan bei xing) to maintain the lung-moistening effect.