We believe wholeheartedly that some of the most powerful medicine is passed down through generations, coming to life in home kitchens rather than clinics. This traditional recipe comes to us from Alex Rosenberg-Rigutto, a farmer, home herbalist, educator, and devoted home cook living in Michigan’s upper Great Lakes basin.
At the heart of this Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) inspired recipe is Tremella fuciformis, aka snow fungus, white jelly mushroom, or silver ear. This soft, translucent, jelly mushroom grows in tropical and subtropical forests across Asia and has been used for centuries in TCM.
A Remedy for Winter Dryness, From the Inside Out
In TCM, Tremella is revered as a:
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Beauty tonic for skin and hair
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Yin-nourishing vitality food
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Lung moistener for dryness
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Digestive and immune ally
It’s been long prepared in sweet soups and desserts designed to hydrate your body from the inside out, especially during dry, cold seasons. Alex was drawn to tremella during her own struggles with winter dryness manifesting as constipation, flaky skin, cracking, redness, and acne (from slowed digestion). After learning from TCM practitioners and traditional cooks about how tremella had supported their communities for generations, Alex went to her local Asian grocer, picked up wild-harvested tremella, and tried her first batch of soup. She was immediately hooked.
How Tremella Supports Digestion
Tremella is rich in mucilaginous, bulk forming fiber that hydrates the GI tract and gently supports healthy elimination. Unlike stimulant laxatives (or even poorly hydrated chia seeds and psyllium husks), it doesn’t pull water from the rest of your body. Instead, it ADDS moisture, forming a smooth bulk that moves things along without cramping, emergency bathroom situations, or dehydration.
Alex also found the mushroom itself to be a joy to eat (such a fun texture!), so she started adding it to other meals as well. As her digestion regulated, her complexion followed. Today, tremella mushroom and this beautiful traditional Chinese soup are part of her weekly rotation, and we’re so grateful she (and traditional cultures that carried this wisdom long before us) shared it.
Ingredients:
Note: this is a pared-down, traditional base recipe. Feel free to add lily bulbs, lotus seeds, or longan fruit if you’d like to expand it.
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1 dried tremella mushroom
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2 tablespoons dried peach gums
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2 tablespoons dried goji berries
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3 dried red dates, torn or cut into pieces
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1 peeled Asian pear or peeled apple
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1-inch chunk of fresh ginger (optional)
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Chinese rock sugar to taste (or 1 teaspoon of cane sugar)
Method:
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Soak the tremella mushroom and peach gums in a bowl of water overnight.
- Peach gums must hydrate for at least 8 hours.
- Tremella must hydrate for at least 1 hour.
- Drain and add them to a saucepan with the remaining ingredients.
- Fill with just enough water to cover everything and place a lid on the pot.
- Simmer gently for 1 hour.
- Turn off the heat and serve warm. All ingredients can (and should!) be eaten!
Alex is the co-owner of Northwoods Farmstead & Skill Center, a budding 10-acre farmstand rooted in bioregional living, land-based skills, and the belief that food and medicine belong to all of us. Alex’s work centers around helping people reconnect with what grows around them, what nourishes them, and what heals them – through gardens, kitchens, and old-world wisdom. This beauty soup is a perfect reflection of that ethos: simple, ancestral, and deeply nourishing.
Follow Alex on Instagram at @alexandraskyee and read her longer form writing on Substack.
