Bencao House
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Food as medicine

Astragalus

黄芪Huáng Qí

四气 Nature
Warm · 温
五味 Flavour
Sweet
归经 Channels
Spleen · Lung
Shared-origin list
Added November 2023

Astragalus root is slightly warm and sweet, and belongs to the Spleen and Lung channels. Chinese medicine reads it as the classical way to hold up qi that has sagged: tiredness that is worse for talking, and skin that sweats without effort. China added it to the shared-origin catalogue in November 2023. In kitchens it goes into broth and is fished back out.

Four long pale dried astragalus root slices, showing their radial grain, photographed on warm plaster.
Astragalus mongholicus · Dried sliced root

Astragalus mongholicus

四气 · Nature

  1. cold
  2. cool
  3. neutral
  4. warm
  5. hot
Warms gently

五味 · Flavour

sour
Gathers and holdsLiver
bitter
Drains and driesHeart
sweet
Fills, slows, harmonisesSpleen
pungent
Disperses and movesLung
salty
Softens and sends downKidney
归经 Channels
Spleen · Lung
Part used
Dried sliced root
Shared-origin list
Added November 2023

In the canon

What the texts say

Astragalus is in the upper class of the Shennong Bencao Jing, c. 200 CE, and it has stayed near the top of the Chinese materia medica ever since. The character pair 黄芪 is usually unpacked as “the yellow elder” — yellow for the colour of the cut root, elder for its rank among the substances that supplement. Chinese physicians have called it the chief of that whole group for a very long time.

Shennong Bencao JingThe Divine Husbandman’s Classic of Materia Medicac. 200 CE

Sweet and slightly warm. It secures the exterior and lifts what has sunk.

Upper class, among the herbs

The two verbs in that line are the whole of it. Securing the exterior — 固表 — describes a border that is not holding: sweat that comes with no exertion, a person who catches whatever is going round the office and takes three weeks to shake it. Lifting what has sunk describes a heaviness in the middle of the body, a feeling of everything dragging downwards by the afternoon.

The best-known classical pairing, from the Jin-Yuan period, is astragalus with one part of a bitter root called 防风 and one of white atractylodes — a three-item formula whose name translates as the Jade Screen, and whose whole idea is a wall rather than a weapon. You do not need to buy that formula. You need to know that this is what astragalus is for in the tradition: the wall, not the fight.

Astragalus reached the food side of the ledger late. It was one of the nine items China’s National Health Commission added to its shared-origin catalogue in November 2023, alongside reishi. The addition came with conditions — the permitted use is culinary, in soups and broths — and those conditions are the ones we follow here.

In a kitchen

How it is actually used

Astragalus arrives as flat tongue-depressor slices of pale wood, faintly sweet, faintly like liquorice-root and hay. Nobody eats it. It goes into a pot, gives what it gives to the liquid, and comes out again before the food is served — the same way a bay leaf does. In northern China it lives in the soup pot in autumn and winter and comes out of the cupboard again each October.

Astragalus chicken broth

Four bowls1 hour 30 minutes

15 g · 8–10 slices
Dried astragalus root, lifted out before serving
1 kg · 2 lb
Chicken pieces on the bone, or a small whole bird
2 L · 8 cups
Cold water
20 g · 4 whole
Dried red jujubes, split to the stone
4 slices
Fresh ginger, unpeeled
  1. Cover the chicken with cold water in a large pot, bring it just to the boil, and pour the whole lot away. Rinse the pieces. This blanching step is not optional in a Chinese kitchen and it is why restaurant broth is clear.
  2. Return the chicken to the clean pot with the fresh cold water, the astragalus slices and the ginger. Bring it up slowly and skim once.
  3. Hold it at a bare simmer, barely bubbling, for an hour and a quarter. A rolling boil turns the broth cloudy and does nothing useful.
  4. Add the split dates for the last twenty minutes. Lift out and discard the astragalus slices before you serve — they have given everything they have and they are wood.

A vegetarian pot works the same way: astragalus, dates, a handful of dried shiitake and a piece of daikon, simmered forty minutes. The broth should taste faintly sweet at the back, which is how you know the root was any good.

Who it is for

Who it suits, and who it does not

The single most common mistake with astragalus is timing. It is a food for the quiet weeks, not the bad ones. Chinese practice is firm that it does not belong in the pot while something acute is going on — while there is a fever, a sore throat, an active infection — because the classical reading is that it shuts the door with the visitor still inside.

Tends to suit

  • Catching everything that goes round, several times a winter.
  • Sweating easily during the day with no exertion behind it.
  • A tiredness that is heavy and low rather than wired.
  • The flat weeks after a long illness, once it has fully passed.
  • Autumn, in the northern Chinese reading — before the cold, not during it.

Tends not to suit

  • Any fever, sore throat or active infection, on that day and until it clears.
  • Anyone taking medication that manages an autoimmune condition.
  • Anyone after a transplant, on medication to prevent rejection.
  • A red face, thirst and restlessness — the picture the tradition calls excess heat.
  • Pregnancy, without asking first.

Honestly

What to know before you start

The reading

Astragalus suits some people and not others

This page describes a food. It cannot tell you whether it belongs in your week, because it knows nothing about how you sleep, eat or feel the cold. A reading does: thirty questions, one photograph of your tongue, and a document written in English by a physician licensed in China for US $39, sent within 48 hours.

Begin a reading$39Read a sample report