Ginger and Scallion Soup
What to make at the first tickle in the throat, before a cold has properly arrived.
Season Year-round
Ingredients
- 5 slices of fresh ginger, peeled and diced
- 3 scallions, chopped
- 1½ cups water
Method
Boil lightly, uncovered, for about ten minutes, and drink it hot. It should bring on a light sweat.
Timing is the whole thing here. This is for the first few hours, when you feel chilled, your nose has started to run clear, and you have the sense that something is coming. Once you are properly ill it has little to offer.
It is a household version of a classical formula. Cōng Chǐ Tāng 葱豉汤 — scallion and prepared soybean decoction — is about as simple as Chinese herbal medicine gets, and it treats exactly this: the earliest stage of a wind-cold, when the trouble is still on the surface and can be pushed back out. Scallion white — cōng bái 蔥白 — is acrid and warm, opens the pores, and moves yang qi outward. Ginger does the same and reinforces it.
The instruction to raise only a light sweat matters more than it sounds. The Shanghan Lun is explicit that sweating should be gentle and even — moist all over, not dripping. A heavy sweat spends the body’s reserves without expelling anything, and can leave you worse than before. If you find yourself soaked, you have overdone it.
A bowl of hot congee with ginger and scallion stirred through it does the same job and is easier to keep down.