Healthy winter melon tea for the hot summer；
I know that this summer drink might be slightly strange to you. However if you ever visited Taiwan, you may see it available everywhere. In China, winter melon tea is believed to be help people dealing with hot temperature. And since it contains no fat and may help to eliminate extra water in human body, winter melon tea is also named as slim tea, indicating that it might be help to loose weight.
Firstly, I would think the taste is slightly weird especially when served hot. However it really taste fresh and cool when serve with ice cubes. By the way, just for some information, winter melon 冬瓜 is a common ingredient in Chinese kitchen. It goes well with soups, braised dishes and even salad. When serving this winter melon, you will need to dilute concentrated liquor by three times of pure water. The little bottle in the following picture is the concentrated liquor I extracted from winter melon while the two cups behind are diluted version.
- 1500 g winter melon
- 250 g brown sugar powder
- 50 g rock sugar
- Clean water
- Ice cubes
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Wash the winter melon carefully and then remove the skins. Then cut the left part into small cubes. Throw them into a large pot.
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Spread brown sugar powder and give a big stir to mix them evenly. Set aside for around 1 hour until there is a thin layer of water in the bottle.
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Use high fire to bring everything in the pot to a boiling and then add rock sugar. (I would suggest adding the skins and seeds back in this step. But it is totally up to you) Slow down the fire to simmer for 1.5 hours to 2 hours based on your cooking ware until the winter melon is totally transparent. Turn off the fire and wait to cool down.
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Strain the juice out. And press the winter melon with heavily during the process to get as more juice as possible. Or you can use gauze to wrap the winter melon and squeeze the juice out.
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How to store: store in airtight container and refrigerate up to 2 weeks, as there is no preservatives in our homemade version.
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How to serve: add water three times more than the juice to make an easy winter melon tea whenever you want. Add some iced cubes will make it a perfect summer drink.
For a even sweeter taste, you can adjust the amount of rock sugar.
Hi Elaine,
Thanks for the recipe. That is the favorite item in my family since I was young.
KP Kwan
Interesting! Never thought of winter melon to make tea. I will definitely give it a try!
Thank you for the recipe! I left the melon pieces to soak in brown sugar overnight and left out the rock sugar because my family doesn’t like sweet drinks. It’s chilling in the refrigerator now. Can’t wait to drink it. 😀
Hi Elaine,
the “brown” sugar you use looks strange to me. It seems to have very small crystals and it looks kind of “wet”. I do get brown sugar in two kinds. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane with the first one being more common here. But they both form rather large crystals. What kind of sugar are you using for this tea?
Andreas,
The sugar I used in this recipe is made from Sugarcane. We call it “甘蔗” in Chinese.
Hi Elaine,
I’d really like to try this. But I’m having trouble figuring out how much water to start with and what amount to reduce it to.
Andreas, I was a bit confused myself, but from my understanding it does not look like you’d add any water during the boiling process. And that you’d just turn off the heat when the melon becomes transparent.
The water comes when you are ready to serve it, add 3 times the amount of water to winter melon concentrate in your cup only. Hope, I’m interpreting it correctly!
Thank you Kim,
yes now when I reread it you’re probably right.
Too bad summer is already gone… I’ll try next one.