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Page 67
| the covers in place and stand the cooker in a pan of boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer for several hours. If the pan is large enough, cover it with its own lid; this will reduce evaporation. Otherwise, check the water level every hour and add water as necessary to prevent the pan from drying out. A glass jar on a small rack makes an effective ginseng cooker, too. |
| The water extract produced by the ginseng cooker can be refrigerated and diluted. You can use a full ounce of root in a pint of water, then dilute the resulting tea with three to five times as much water for a daily cup. In this way, a single use of the cooker keeps you supplied with tea for a week and keeps fuel and ginseng costs down without sacrificing quality. |
| The root can be used once or twice more, although the resulting tea will be weaker. You can combine an old piece with a new one to maintain the brew's strength without wasting any ginseng. Ginseng roots are white (dried) or red (steamed and dried). The red root is more expensive and is said to be more effective. Tea from white root turns brown as it brews, while tea made from red root remains clear. The more bitter the taste, the stronger the brew. |
| Most of the ginseng sold in Asia today comes from the United States and most of America's ginseng is grown in Wisconsin. Hsu's Ginseng Enterprises in Wausau, Wisconsin, one of the world's largest ginseng producers, recommends that dried ginseng root be steamed or warmed at low heat for five to ten minutes to make it easier to slice, although you can often break a piece without much trouble. The root can be chewed, brewed into tea or made into a concentrated tincture by covering one or more roots with vodka and shaking the jar every day for a month. |
| It is difficult to say how much ginseng to take because preparations vary as much as the people taking them. In general, the smaller the person, the smaller the dose. The typical recommendation for a 150-pound adult is 5 to 7 |
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