Turtle soup is highly recommended by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) as the best possible medicine to revive failing kidneys. The kidneys control every organ in the body, especially the heart and the pancreas. Weak kidneys can cause high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, and Type II diabetes. When your kidneys are completely failing, you have two choices: turtle soup or a kidney transplant.
To make turtle soup, you will need a huge stainless steel pot, big enough to hold a ceramic pot placed inside it. You can buy these pots at a Chinese market. In Sacramento, CA you can buy the pots, along with all the ingredients for the soup, including a live turtle, at Welco Supermarket. The clerk at the market will chop the live turtle into pieces with a huge cleaver, and then package it up so that you don’t have to look at it.
It will take a minimum of two days to prepare and cook the soup. First, you start by making a broth from a whole chicken and some Chinese herbs. You will need a third pot for the broth. The chicken and the herbs must cook for a minimum of 8 hours. Then you put the turtle, shell and all, inside the ceramic pot and cover the turtle with the chicken broth.
Place the ceramic pot, filled with the turtle and the broth, inside the stainless steel pot and fill the stainless steel pot up to within one inch of the top of the ceramic pot. The turtle soup must cook for a minimum of 12 hours, but longer cooking is better. After a few hours of cooking, you can remove the ceramic pot and place the turtle soup inside your refrigerator, then continue cooking it the next day, if you do not want to stay up all night watching the soup.
Recipe for Turtle Soup
Make a broth from these ingredients:
1. One ounce Dioscorea (Shen Yao)
2. One and a half ounces Radix Astragali (Huang Qi)
3. One and a half ounces Codonopsis Pilosula (Dang Shen)
4. One half ounce Medlar (Qi Zhi)
5. 8 dried Chinese dates
6. One whole (dead) chicken with the feathers and feet removed. Include the liver, heart, gizzard and neck in the broth.
When the broth is done, remove the chicken meat and the bones, but not the herbs.
Put the chopped up turtle (including the shell) into the ceramic pot and fill the pot, up to one inch from the top, with the chicken broth.
Place a towel or some chop sticks on the bottom of the stainless steel pot so that the ceramic pot does not touch the bottom of the stainless steel pot.
Pour water into the stainless steel pot, and allow the soup to simmer inside the ceramic pot for 12 hours at least. Do not allow the water in the stainless steel pot to get into the ceramic pot, which has a small hole in the lid. Cover the stainless steel pot with a tight-fitting lid and allow the soup to simmer for up to 7 days.
To serve the soup, remove the pieces of turtle shell. You may also remove the turtle meat. You do not have to eat the turtle meat, as all of the medicinal properties will be in the broth. The amount of broth that you are required to drink depends on how much you boil it down. Normally, about 12 ounces of broth will be enough to have a good effect on your kidneys.
Turtle soup can be eaten once a month until your kidneys recover. For people who don’t have weak kidneys, the soup can be eaten once a year to maintain good health.
How will you know if your kidneys have improved, after you have eaten the soup? A TCM doctor can tell you how well your kidneys are working. When your kidneys are working the way they should, you will have not have to get up at night to go to the bathroom, and you will have no tell-tale symptoms of failing kidneys, like dry mouth. You will have renewed energy and your blood pressure, and blood sugar, will be normal.
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