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My Chinese Herbal Tea Staple
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items This is my go to Chinese herbal tea combo that I grew up with and now it's part of my daily wellness routine. It's simple, warming and balanced with optional beauty enhancing ingredients. I keep these on hand to brew teas that are comforting, flavorful and intentional. Mix and Match to taste!
Sections
3
Herbal Base Ingredients
Optional Enhancement (Flavor & Depth)
Collagen & Beauty Boosters
Herbal Base Ingredients
The non-negotiables. These four ingredients show up in almost every Chinese herbal tea my family has made for generations — red dates, goji berries, longan, and ginger. If you stock nothing else, stock these.
Add natural sweetness and warmth. Almost every Chinese household has these. My mom threw them into everything — soup, tea, rice. Now I understand why. Red dates nourish blood, support energy, and make everything taste like home.
Chinese Red Dates 红枣 — Jujubes for Herbal Tea
Traditionally used to support overall balance and vitality. These aren't a trend — they've been in Chinese kitchens for thousands of years. Add a small handful to any herbal tea and let them plump up as they steep.
Chinese Goji Berries — Red Wolfberry 枸杞
Comforting, lightly sweet, and used for warming and sweetening. Longan calms the mind and nourishes the heart in TCM. It's the ingredient that makes herbal tea feel like a hug.
Dried Longan (龙眼)
Adds heat and helps the tea feel grounding. Ginger is the activator — it warms the whole formula and helps your body absorb everything else. Use dried for convenience, fresh when you have it.
Fresh Ginger or dried ginger
Immunity and qi building, one of the most researched herbs in TCM. Add a few slices to any base tea and let it work quietly in the background. My version of a daily supplement.
Astragalus Root dried (黄芪)
Cooling, liver support, and deeply traditional. This is the summer version of herbal tea — light, floral, and clarifying. My mom made this whenever anyone had tired eyes or a headache.
Dried Chrysanthemum 菊花
Everything your red goji berries do but with a higher anthocyanin content and a deeper antioxidant profile. They turn your tea a stunning deep purple-blue color that looks almost too beautiful to drink. A newer discovery for me but now a permanent pa...
Chinese Black Wolfberries - 黑枸杞
Calming, heart and spleen support in TCM. Pairs beautifully with red dates and longan for a complete nourishing base. Slightly starchy, slightly sweet, and deeply grounding. The ingredient that makes the whole pot feel intentional.
Lotus Seeds 莲子
Optional Enhancement (Flavor & Depth)
This is where you make it yours. These additions shift the tea toward specific needs — more warmth, more sweetness, more floral notes. Mix and match based on what your body is asking for that day.
The traditional sweetener, not refined sugar. Rock sugar dissolves slowly and adds a clean sweetness that doesn't overpower. This is what my mom used and what I'll always use. Once you sweeten herbal tea with rock sugar everything else tastes like a ...
Rock Sugar 冰糖 (Bing Tang)
Sweeter and softer than regular red dates, honey dates dissolve slowly into herbal tea and leave behind a natural golden sweetness that needs nothing else added. My mom used these when she wanted the tea to feel like a treat without adding sugar. One...
Chinese Candied Honey Dates (蜜枣)
Floral, light, and pairs with everything. Osmanthus is the finishing touch — a small pinch transforms a simple herbal tea into something that feels ceremonial. The ingredient that makes people ask what you're drinking.
Dried Osmanthus Flowers
Digestive, warming, and gets more medicinal with age. The longer it's aged the more valuable — this is the ingredient serious TCM practitioners collect like wine. A small piece goes a long way and the flavor it adds is unlike anything else in the pot...
Aged Tangerine Peel (陈皮 Chen Pi)
Liver qi and emotional regulation in TCM — also just beautiful in the cup. Add a small handful when you need the tea to feel gentle and nurturing rather than medicinal. The ingredient for the days when you need to be soft with yourself.
Dried Rose Petals
Naturally sweet with a vanilla-adjacent aroma. My Vietnamese side knows this one well — pandan shows up in everything from rice to dessert to tea. The Southeast Asian bridge ingredient that makes this formula uniquely mine and nobody else's.
Pandan Leaves Dried
Fresh apple slices add a clean, light sweetness that balances stronger herbal flavors without overpowering them. My mom added apple when she wanted the tea to feel approachable for kids — now I add it when I want something gentle and naturally sweet ...
Fresh Apple 苹果 — Natural Sweetener for Herbal Tea
Snow pear is the TCM go-to for dry coughs, sore throats, and autumn lung care. My mom made snow pear soup with rock sugar every time anyone in the house had a scratchy throat — it worked every single time. Add fresh or dried slices to your tea base a...
Chinese Asian Pear 雪梨 - Lung Herbal Tea
The cooling counterpart to ginger. Where ginger warms and activates, mint clears and refreshes. Add dried mint in summer when you want the herbal base to feel lighter, or pair it with chrysanthemum for a cooling blend that helps with heat, headaches,...
Dried Mint Leaves 薄荷
Collagen & Beauty Boosters
The upgrades my mom never called "wellness" but absolutely were. These ingredients have been in Chinese kitchen medicine forever — we just finally have the research to back what she already knew.
Called the women's herb for a reason — dong quai nourishes blood, supports circulation, and is especially powerful after your period or during hormonal transitions. This is the herb my mom made specifically for the women in our family. Strong flavor,...
Chinese Dried Dong Quai Root 当归 — The Women's Herb
The original collagen food in Chinese medicine, long before any supplement existed. Soak overnight, add to tea or sweet soup. The texture is gelatinous and the benefits for skin hydration are real. My grandmother's beauty secret finally has the scien...
Snow Fungus (白木耳)
The sleeper hit of Chinese beauty foods. Soak overnight until it blooms, then add to snow fungus soup with red dates and honey dates. Gelatinous, deeply nourishing, and completely underrepresented in Western wellness spaces. This is the ingredient th...
Peach Gum Jelly for Skin Health 桃胶
Western bridge product your audience recognizes, pair it with the traditional ingredients for a modern TCM angle
Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides Powder
The most prized ingredient in Chinese beauty medicine and the one my mom saved for special occasions. Edible bird's nest has been used for centuries in TCM for skin radiance, lung nourishment, and deep cellular restoration — and modern research is fi...
Golden Nest: Swallow Bird Nest Soup - Amazon.com
Soothing dry coughs, calming the mind, improving sleep, supporting lung and heart health, and aiding digestion
Lilly Bulbs TMC