Honeysuckle, monk fruit and chrysanthemum tea is ideal for autumn and winter. This herbal tea benefits the throat and lung according to Traditional Chinese Medicine. Naturally sweetened by monk fruit, this herbal tea is low-carb, keto and vegan.

My son has been sick with a sore throat and a cough. I made this honeysuckle, monk fruit and chrysanthemum tea for him to drink. If you have children, you know how important it is to have herbal remedies that actually taste good. Monk fruit is naturally sweeter than sugar, but without the carbs and calories. This honeysuckle, monk fruit and chrysanthemum throat tea is sweet and delicious.

Throat Tea Ingredients

This herbal tea consists only 3 ingredients commonly used in Traditional Chinese Medicine: honeysuckle (Jin Yin Hua, 金银花), monk fruit (Lou Han Guo, 罗汉果), and chrysanthemum (Ju Hua, 菊花). This tea is extremely easy to make. In the recipe, I used all 3 herbs in dehydrated form.

Honeysuckle (金银花)

In Chinese medicine, honeysuckle flowers are used to clear heat and remove toxins. Honeysuckle flowers have antibacterial and antiviral properties to clear inflammatory and infectious conditions. It benefits the respiratory and digestive systems. Honeysuckle flowers are suitable for fever, swollen and sore throat, acnes, stomach flu, etc.

Honeysuckle flowers are popular and versatile. It’s delightful to make a tea with honeysuckle flower alone or mix with other flowers and herbs.

Chrysanthemum (菊花)

Chrysanthemum is well-known for its cooling properties to clear heat in the lung and liver according to traditional Chinese medicine. It can help to treat common cold and upper respiratory infection, cloudy vision, and eye stress. Chrysanthemum flowers are suitable for cold and flu symptoms, such as headache and fever, pain and swelling, cough, dizziness, skin rash and blurred vision.

Chrysanthemum flowers have a beautiful aroma. You can steep or boil it for tea, alone or with other herbs. It is often paired with regular green tea as well.

Monk Fruit (罗汉果)

Sweet with a light fragrance, monk fruit has high nutritional and medicinal values. It’s commonly used in Chinese medicine to stimulate mucus secretion to moisten the throat and lung, and to stimulate insulin secretion to regulate blood glucose. Being low calorie and 200 times sweeter than sugar, it is ideal for diabetic patients.

Most likely you have heard of monk fruits in the context of monk fruit sweeteners. Monk fruit sweeteners are popular in the health food stores and a staple for folks on the keto and low-carb diets. But monk fruit is so much more than a low-carb sweet fruit. Using them whole has a long tradition in China.

Because of its cooling nature for the respiratory and digestive systems, it is used to treat swollen and sore throat, calm cough, clear phlegm, and alleviate constipation. Monk fruit is commonly used in herbal medicine and healing soups.

Can You Drink The Tea If You Aren’t Sick?

Can you drink the tea if you don’t have a cough or sore throat? Yes.

Although I made this tea for my son who was sick with a flu, you can drink this tea even when you aren’t sick. Thanks to the cooling and detoxing properties, this tea is ideal for hot summer days, for rebalancing the body after eating spicy and greasy foods, and for clearing excess liver fire and congestion.

Excess liver fire often presents the symptoms such as headache, red face and burning eyes, nosebleeds, dry mouth, swollen and painful gum, toxic skin eruptions, constipation, inflammation, angry outburst, etc.

Where to Buy the Herbs

Stores

I highly recommend checking out some Chinese herbal shops for purchasing these herbal tea ingredients. Specialty shops carry a larger selection and higher quality medicinal herbs. You can usually find what you are looking for at those places.

Besides herbal shops, honeysuckles, chrysanthemum and monk fruits are often sold in large Chinese grocery stores too. In Toronto, I can find all 3 of the ingredients at T&T. Another place to look is Chinese tea shop; they will likely carry honeysuckles and chrysanthemum.

Online

Even if you can’t find the ingredients anywhere locally, we are fortunate to have online shopping and home delivery. Because we are using all non-perishable dried herbs, it’s fairly straightforward to purchase them online.

I like the quality of Chinese herbs at Plum Dragon Herbs. My reader exclusive discount code “YANG05” will give you 5% off your entire purchase from them. Here are the links to their chrysanthemum flowers and honeysuckle flowers.

You can also get these herbs from Amazon here:

Tips for Making Herbal Tea

Herbs and flowers are unlike fruits and vegetables with outer protective skins. When making herbal tea, you don’t need to wash the herbs, especially if they are leaves, flowers and seeds. This is because they will soak up a lot of water, and washing will take away the beneficial compounds within them. For this particular recipe, you can gently rinse the outside of a whole monk fruit, but do not wash the monk fruit if you have cracked them open. Whenever possible, buying organic herbs, such as honeysuckle flowers and chrysanthemum flowers, is really worthwhile.
In order to fully extract the compounds from the monk fruit, I highly recommend that you crush the monk fruit into small pieces, before boiling.
To get the most flavour and benefits from a batch of herbs, you can often boil it for the second time. This reduces waste and is more economical.

Related: Other Tasty Natural Food Remedies for The Winter Season