The Dragon Boat Festival is coming again. We eat zongzi every year, but because most people prefer zongzi made with meat and glutinous rice, and eating too much can easily make you feel greasy. So how can you eat zongzi to counteract the greasiness?
Drink hot black tea to cut the grease
Zongzi are often greasy, and eating too many can easily make you feel bloated and heavy. Moreover, glutinous rice is not easy to digest, so eating too many zongzi can easily lead to a feeling of being greasy and having indigestion. Hot black tea, however, has the effect of cutting through grease. Drinking some hot black tea while eating zongzi can play a great role in relieving greasiness and aiding digestion. In fact, you can just pair black tea with zongzi. It doesn't need to be a specific type of black tea, but it must be hot to effectively cut the grease.
At the same time, avoid drinking cold beverages when eating zongzi. Cold drinks can cause the glutinous rice to solidify more, making it even harder to digest and leading to a feeling of bloating and heaviness.
Guanxiang tea aids digestion
In addition to regular black tea, a type of tea native to Dongguan is also great for enjoying with zongzi, as it can aid digestion and relieve summer heat. This Guanxiang tea is more like a traditional Chinese medicine and was recommended by Liu Shijian, a senior traditional Chinese medicine doctor from Dongguan.
Liu Shijian introduced that this Guanxiang tea comes from a wild shrub on Dalingshan Mountain, a little over a meter tall. The leaves are picked, dried in the sun, and then processed into tea. It has effects such as relieving summer heat, clearing heat and detoxifying, aiding digestion, lowering blood lipids, and reducing internal heat. Pairing it with zongzi helps with digestion.
When brewed in water, the tea has a light yellow color. When you bring it close to smell it, it has a hawthorn-like scent that is both slightly sour and sweet, which is refreshing. When you drink it, the light flavor just balances out the taste of the zongzi. Liping from Huayuan Porridge City explained that people have been drinking this tea for a very long time. It grows wild all over Dalingshan Mountain. Many people would cut it down to use as firewood, while others would brew it as tea. During the peak of summer, it can help relieve the heat and aid digestion.
Eat zongzi with condensed milk
The plain zongzi has a light and bland skin. Many people like to dip it in honey, but eating it with condensed milk is even better. Cut the zongzi into pieces and dip them in condensed milk. This makes it less greasy and adds flavor to the plain zongzi.
You must choose plain zongzi for this method. If you use salty zongzi, the combination of sweet and salty can become overly greasy after a while. Furthermore, this way of eating zongzi can remind people of Western-style dishes, and this East-meets-West combination is also enjoyable.
Fried zongzi pieces with egg skin
The outer layer is a thin egg skin, while the inside is cut zongzi. When you bite into it, the outside is crispy and the inside is soft and tender, with a rich zongzi aroma. Such a zongzi is more like a dessert or a dish.
Did you know that you can actually turn zongzi into a dish to share with everyone? Have one piece each, and while enjoying the delicious flavor of the zongzi, you won't easily feel greasy. The method for making this is very simple: just cut the zongzi into pieces, spread a thin layer of egg in a pan and fry it, place the zongzi pieces on top, fold it over, and fry it together. This will achieve a crispy outside and soft inside effect. You can smell the delicious aroma of this zongzi from a distance.