[0:00]If you're like me and you want to boost your collagen levels and heal your gut health, I'm going to show you this delicious recipe that's going to heal it all.
[0:10]Today, we're going to make something called Luo Song Tong, and it's a beef soup that's super popular all over Hong Kong. And you see it all over the Tatangs, which is the quintessential Hong Kong bistro restaurants and something that I grew up with because my dad actually grew up in Hong Kong, and so he used to make this at home all the time. And borscht originally was actually a Ukrainian, European soup that was brought over and over time, they modified it to become this delicious tomato-based soup. It's the perfect blend of sweet, salty, sour, umami, and is so high in collagen that it's gut-healing. I want to show you how to make it.
[0:54]It's super easy and it's the third recipe of our soup series. So if you enjoy videos like this, health wellness and beauty, please subscribe and let's get into how to make it. So here are all the ingredients. All right, for the vegetables, I'm pretty much just going to dice everything. All right, so we have all the vegetables cut, but for the beef, I'm actually going to do something different to what we did with the chicken and the pork. We're not going to parboil it, which is where you boil the meat first to get all that scum away. For beef, we actually want to sear it. And to sear it, you just add oil to the pan, put the meat in, not to cook it, but to give it that nice golden brown, and that's actually going to give the soup so much rich flavor, and it's going to keep the meat tender. And I also wanted to talk quickly about the types of cuts of meat. I have oxtail and I have beef shank, and these are the best two types of meats that you can use for a beef broth or a stock because there's so much connective tissue, cartilage, bone marrow, and all of that when you simmer it for a really long time, are the fundamental nutrients to help with the skin, and our bones, and our brain, and our gut health, and it's so good.
[2:35]We don't want to cook the meat, we just want to give it that color, so just kind of rotate it. This step also stops the meat from like bleeding out into the soup, so it retains that kind of clarity and um, flavor profile. But before we do any more cooking, let me just tell you, I hate lingering cooking smells. So let me share how I control the odors around the house so that we can still cook up a storm. I've been using these Azuna pods. So it's this little guy and they're our partner today, and it essentially neutralizes any questionable smell that you have at home, wherever that may be. And it's really cool because it's almost like a gel cream consistency that you squeeze into the pod. So that's all in there. It's like jelly. And the one I always get is this one, it's the orange and cranberry, and you guys can use Beauty Within 30 for 30% off. So after you put that in there, you just twist it up. Look how cute she is. It looks like a incense kind of holder. And I'll just put this literally on my kitchen counter, and this is between my trash can, which is just here, and my kitchen sink, which is always full of, you know, dirty dishes. And the trash can when it gets hot, it starts emanating like smells that I just don't want. And this literally will absorb all the smells without creating a weird scent. Because I used to actually use a lot of candles to kind of mask that smell, but it just kind of creates this weird like mixture of food and candles, which was not a vibe. And that's why this one works differently because it's a slow release gel that actually has Australian tea tree and it helps to eliminate the odors from the source, not just kind of mask it. So I also like putting one in my entry shoe area because obviously that has a lot of different scents, and so you just leave it there and let it do its thing. And this guy lasts for about 90 days and the gel will darken, which is a sign that, you know, it's time to change it up. And then when you're done with it, just get another refill, fill it up, and then put it back in its place. It's US made, and it's made from natural active ingredients. So trust me on this, guys, it will help refresh and everything without being overwhelming. So check our link below and use BEAUTYWITHIN30 to freshen up your own space, and let's check on our food. All right, so now, we have our meat, but we're first going to put ginger, garlic, and then some onion. You can see it starts to develop a really beautiful golden color, which is what we want. Then I'm going to add our diced tomatoes. Get them nice and soft. And then we're going to add the carrots and also the celery, but I like to leave the potatoes and the cabbage after a little while because I don't want them to become too soft. But if you want, just chuck it all in at once. It's really fine. And we're just going to stir for about 2 to 3 minutes and really kind of like sauté it, medium to high. We don't want to steam the veggies, we want to sauté them. Now, we're going to add our secret ingredient, which is the ketchup. This is honestly what makes it taste like the Tatang in Hong Kong. It's like the restaurants that sell this. It gives it that tanginess, a little bit of sweetness, sourness, and it's truly the game-changer. If you're wondering what the difference is between ketchup and tomato paste. If you use tomato paste, it makes it more deeper, richer, more umami. So it's kind of up to you. That's why I love using both, and later on we're going to adjust it to taste. Then we're going to add the meat back in. Now I'm just going to add chicken stock. If you don't have chicken stock, you can just use water, but the chicken mixes really well with it. And what we want is to make sure there's enough liquid, so that it's like 1 to 2 inches above the rest of the ingredients. So this is my bay leaf. So I'm just going to put it in. Now I'm going to turn down the heat to low, and we're essentially going to simmer, and the longer you can simmer beef bone, the better it will be. It will extract all that gelatin, that, you know, collagen, that jiggly goodness. So I'm going to come back halfway through and then we're going to add our potatoes and cabbage to make sure that they also have flavor. Okay, while that's slowly simmering away, I want to talk a little bit more about why bone broth is so powerful from a Western medicine perspective, as well as an Eastern medicine perspective. Because this is one of those foods that both of them fundamentally agree on. So in Western medicine, a lot of health professionals say that our gut is essentially the second brain. And sometimes they even say it's the first brain because it's that central control system that determines nutrient absorption, it regulates and creates emotions and moods. It absorbs everything to feed our skin and our hair, so if we want that glowing skin from within, it's really starting in the gut. And I didn't know this until recently, when I was doing research, but actually 80 to 90% of serotonin is made from the gut, and 50% of dopamine is also made from the gut. And both of these are hormones that help to regulate our mood and emotions, our sleep, our appetite and digestion. And dopamine is that happy hormone that triggers, you know, motivation, memory, focus, and that reward sensation. So anytime you feel good about something, you release dopamine, that's made in the gut, guys. So when your gut is down and the lining isn't strong, then you're not actually able to absorb any of the nutrients from the body, it just leaks out. So imagine everything that you eat isn't even being properly absorbed if your gut is not in the right place. That's insane. And the gut actually has this lining that needs to be protected. I kind of think of it as our skin barrier. You know how our skin barrier is that first line of defense, but it also needs to be fed with, you know, a good serum, a good moisturizer so that that microbiome can like fend off bad things and keep in the good things.
[9:00]It's the same with our gut, but instead of a serum and a moisturizer, we actually need these healthy fatty acids and all these nutrients to coat that gut lining. So that we can produce all these good hormones. And then in TCM, there's also the same concept of digestive fire. So the stomach and the spleen are central in TCM to digestion, energy transformation and general women's health. And how Chinese medicine approaches the stomach is that your body is a warm place. And so when we eat foods, we want the food to match our internal temperature. Because it takes less energy to actually break down that food, transform it into energy, absorb the nutrients, and it's kind of imbalanced with your body. Whereas if you always put in cold foods, raw foods, uncooked and too much of that imbalance will then cause that inflammation and cause your body to work overtime, which actually puts out that natural digestive fire. And so like me, if you always kind of felt a little bit tired, you had bloating issues, and maybe you even have menstruation issues, all of this could be signs that there's an imbalance of that young or hot energy in your midsection and especially your stomach. Yes, it has been around the 2-hour mark. I aim to cook this for at least four, so let's see. It looks so good. Oh my gosh, it smells fantastic. I'm going to add all the rest of the ingredients that we didn't put in, including the tomato paste, and the cabbage and the potatoes, and a little squeeze of lemon, and a little bit of salt. All right, so obviously, tomato paste is very concentrated, so I'm going to put like two heap spoons. Oh my God, look at our meat. It's feeling so soft. You can see that layer of like glistening goodness on the top. That's just going to get more and more, and that's a mixture of the gelatin, that collagen. It's got amino acids, nutrients, vitamins, it's very great. I'm also going to now add some salt, and then some lemon, just a little bit.
[11:28]Gives it that kick, and then we'll just season it to taste later. Like cabbage and lettuce are basically all water, and so it's going to add even more water to the soup and release some of their nutrients. So I think this is good. Don't have to add too much for now, and we're going to cover it again and come back in like 1 to 2 hours. So we're going to give it a little more time, but let me break down what makes bone broth so good. It's collagen, glycine, and glutamine. So first is collagen. So actually, 70 to 80% of our skin is made up of collagen, and collagen is actually a protein that's made up of amino acids. So this collagen, as we know, decreases slowly as we age. And that's why we actually need to eat more collagen because it's doing way more than putting collagen on our skin. The collagen particle is too large for the surface. That's why we need to build it from the inside, right? So, beauty within, collagen within. And you might not know, but bone broth is one of the best ways to get that in to our diet in the most easy way. And beef actually has collagen in spades. And what makes beef different to the chicken and the pork is that a beef bone is actually way bigger, right? Which is why we need more time to simmer it because the bones are so big, they have so much cartilage and connective tissue, and that's where collagen is stored. And to release it, you need time and you need heat. And then something really interesting that happens is that when you simmer that collagen from the bones, it becomes gelatin. And gelatin, stay with me, is a bioavailable collagen, which just means that the body knows exactly how to utilize and absorb it and use it straight away. And the easiest sign to know that it's been extracted long enough is when, you know, like it's jiggly, it's jelly when you refrigerate it. That's that good gelatin. And so if you're cooking it in a pot, you'll need at least 3 hours. You want 3 hours to be able to get that jelly. And if you don't give it enough time, it will still be tasty. It will be a good beef soup, but it just won't have that gelatin in it that's good for the skin, your brain, your joints. So a good indicator of if you've cooked it long enough is the jelly texture when it's cold. And that's why if you don't have time, you can also really easily use a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker will get that straight out. And the gelatin when we eat it, helps food move through our system and kind of coat that gut lining, which we want. And because it's so good for that gut lining, it will reduce any inflammation, which means it's good for everything. There's another thing called glycine, and this also helps to fight inflammation in our gut, and it protects the lining so that anything that we eat or drink is less reactive in our stomach. So if you feel like you have a very sensitive stomach, and, you know, whatever you eat, it kind of comes out or whatever, like IBS, and things like that, glycine will protect that gut lining, feed it what it needs to nourish it and heal it. And glycine is also in our brain by the neurotransmitters that send messages all throughout our brain, so that we know how to regulate our moods and our feelings, and our emotions, and our memory, and focus. So actually, it's right up in being utilized in the brain as well. And then the third thing in bone broth is glutamine, and this is directly feeding our gut microbiome all the delicious buffet foods that your gut actually wants and it needs. And glutamine is also pretty interesting because, you know, anytime that we get a cut or a bruise or we're injured somewhere, like maybe if you've had surgery somewhere, even just like broken skin, your body needs white blood cells to send and repair that area. And white blood cells need glutamine to do that. So all of these make bone broth literally the most healing food ever.
[15:44]Okay, gang, it's been 1,000 years. It's like we've been cooking this soup for a thousand years. Oh my gosh, it looks so good. It's all melted into each other. Now is the time that you can start adjusting. Oh my gosh, so good. This meat is so succulent, and there's that that on the top. Okay, and then when you get it, get a little bit of everything. Oh my gosh, look how good that looks. Are you ready to taste the fruits of my labor? Yes. And actually, because we make this so often, I'm curious to know if this tastes any different to the one you normally make. Mmm, and you should tell me which one you like better. Well, of course. I feel like this one has more like of that rich fattiness than yours. Mm. Right? But that's also because I used some pristine meat. Mm, mm. This is honestly, by far, I would say the easiest soup to drink. It's almost Western tasting cuz it's tomato-based. You know, if herbs and stuff are not your thing, this is definitely the one to start with. Although I will say, chicken is probably the easiest to make. Like, because it doesn't take as long. You know, as we said, the beef bones are like the thicker ones. Yeah, like the chicken meat itself wouldn't work in it. But the pay off for gut health is in this one. Thoughts? It's pretty good. Just pretty? Because when I make it, I'll usually get what's available, so, like, whether it's chicken, chicken bones or pork ribs, because I like pork ribs, it's like a different kind of rich. True. So that's a great point because whatever you have, you can use. I would say stick to pork or beef. Normally, I don't think chicken would like work with this. Yeah, like the chicken meat itself wouldn't work in it. Yeah, we did. Anyway, so with bone broth, I feel like it's something that people can talk to death about the benefits of it, but it doesn't mean anything until you try making it yourself. It is truly gut transforming, and it's so great for you, and when you feel it yourself, that's when true change kind of really happens. And so this is the last of my soup series for now. We did chicken, pork and beef, so if you have any other recipes or food or drinks that you would like to see us make next, leave them in the comments. I will still be making a lot, but because there's so much to choose from, I want to know from you guys what you want to see first. And if you haven't watched our, you know, like hair drinks, our skin drinks, our cooling drinks, like there's so much we've made so far. It's why I have such great hair and such good skin. Why? From all your soups. And another thing is, if you're going to have a soup and make it for the week, try drinking the soup first before you have your main meal. Like, this is kind of a hack that I learned from Jesse and Trustby, nutritionist, because it helps your gut lining, you know, it like seals the gut lining. It creates that first kind of warming entry, and makes you full a little bit, so that you don't gorge and overeat on your dinner or lunch. So it's actually a really good hack to balance if you tend to eat too fast, overeat, and have like bloating and kind of gas issues, things like that. The best thing about this soup, and most, is that it tastes the best on the second and third day. This will last up to a week in the fridge, so you're good, but the second and third day, hope you enjoyed this recipe. Try for yourself, and I'll see you in the next one. Remember to like and subscribe. What he said. Good night.
