How to make delicious bitter melon soup?

The first impression of bitter melon is that it is so bitter, so many people give up eating bitter melon. As the saying goes, good medicine tastes bitter but is good for the disease. This is true for all medicines, let alone bitter melon, which has extremely high nutritional value and health-preserving and therapeutic effects. Although bitter melon is a bit bitter, in fact, the bitterness can be removed as long as it is paired with the right ingredients. So, how to make bitter melon soup delicious?

First we need to prepare the bitter gourds, then wash them clean and take out the seeds. Then cut the bitter melon into pieces of uniform size. As for the vegetarian ham, cut it into slices and set aside.

Then boil water in a pot and put the bitter gourd in. You can also prepare some pickled cucumbers sold in supermarkets and put them in to cook together. After the water boils, we turn the heat to low and simmer.

After the bitter gourd becomes soft, we put the ham slices prepared earlier into it. Then add salt and soy sauce for seasoning. If you don’t know the exact amount, you can taste it when adding them.

Just drizzle some sesame oil on top at the end!

Nutrition

Clearing away heat and detoxifying: Bitter melon can relieve the heat in your heart and eliminate toxins in your body. The best way to eat bitter melon is to eat it cold. Eating bitter melon cold can preserve the vitamins contained in it very well. If stir-frying is used, these vitamins will be lost in large quantities during the process, and the oil content after stir-frying is relatively high. People will ingest more fat after eating it, and it will not have the effect of cooling down and reducing heat.

Nourishing and rejuvenating the skin: Eating bitter melon regularly can enhance the vitality of the skin and make the skin delicate and healthy. Mashing fresh bitter melon into juice or boiling it into a soup is a good auxiliary food therapy for liver fire, red eyes, stomach pain, and damp-heat dysentery. Mashing fresh bitter melon and applying it externally can treat carbuncles and furuncles. Children are prone to prickly heat in summer, so cut bitter melon into slices and rub it on the prickly heat on your body to help it heal soon. Boiling bitter melon in water or cooking it as a delicacy can dissipate heat and relieve summer heat.

Lowering blood sugar: Clam meat and bitter melon soup is an excellent product for lowering blood sugar. The crude extract of bitter melon contains insulin-like substances and has a significant blood sugar-lowering effect. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that bitter melon is sweet, bitter and cold in nature, and can clear away heat, relieve restlessness and quench thirst; clam meat is sweet, salty and cold, and can clear away heat, nourish yin, quench thirst and promote diuresis. The combination of the two can clear away heat and nourish yin, and is suitable for patients with diabetes who have stomach yin deficiency and heat.

Nourishing blood and liver: Bitter melon tastes bitter, is cold when raw, and warm when cooked. Eating it raw can clear away heat and reduce fire, relieve fever and relieve restlessness; eating it cooked can nourish blood and liver, moisten the spleen and tonify the kidneys, eliminate evil heat, relieve fatigue, clear the heart and improve eyesight, and replenish qi and strengthen yang. However, when eating bitter melon, you should also be careful not to damage the spleen and lung qi. Although the weather is hot in summer, people should not eat too much bitter food, and it is best to pair it with spicy food (such as chili, pepper, onion, garlic). This can avoid the bitterness entering the heart and help replenish the lung qi.