Peach Gum and a Dessert Soup Recipe

Have you ever tried peach gum? A magic ingredient that can turn your dessert into a thick jelly-like soup. Let’s learn the basics about peach gum and make a lovely soup either served directly or with milk.

Peach gum – TaoJiao

Peach gum, known as peach resin or persimmon resin, is a unique, jelly-like natural food ingredient used in traditional Chinese medicine and cuisine. We Derived from peach or persimmon trees, peach gum has been treasured for centuries for its nutritional properties and thickening texture. It can be widely used in soups, mainly dessert soups, or mixed with milk.

6 interesting facts about peach gum

1. Peach gum is a natural resin secreted by peach trees. It is disease-free and non-toxic. It is edible and highly recommended because of its high collagen content. This plant collagen is believed to be super beneficial to skin beauty and relieving stress.
2. It is not available all year round. Peach gum is only abundantly secreted by peach trees from June to August. So usually we get processed and dried peach gum from the market.
3. There are food-grade and industrial-grade peach gum. Food grade refers to transparent amber-colored gum with very few or no black or little impurities. The inferior quality is used for industrial materials.
4. You need to soak the peach gum in clean water for at least 10 hours until completely swollen before using it. Both for freshly harvested or store-bought dried versions.
5. Peach gum has a cold nature in Chinese traditional medicine and is hard to digest. Pregnant women, children, and babies should avoid it. Adults should also eat in moderation. Overconsumption may cause indigestion and intestinal discomfort.
6. Peach gum has pharmacological effects. It is best cooked with other foods like bird’s nest, Job’s tears, milk, and fruits.

How to purchase high-quality peach gum

Source for food grade or higher grade

If you are purchasing Tao Jiao from Chinese brands, search for AAA which means supreme grade.

The high-quality AAA peach gum has a transparent amber color with very few black dots.

Industrial peach gum has a darker color with an odd taste. So you should always avoid this type when purchasing it for food.

Check the texture

When purchasing whole pieces of gum, inspect for refinement and clarity. Premium peach gum will look like a flawless piece of crystal, smooth in texture without any cracks or debris.

Lower grades appear more opaque with rough surfaces. While low-quality peach gum is not transparent enough because of the impurities.

How to prepare Peach Gum for cooking

Step:1 Soaking in clean Water

Place the cleaned peach gum pieces in a bowl and add enough clean water to submerge them fully. Soak for at least 10 hours or overnight. On summer hot days, place it in the fridge.

Step2: Clean the peach gum

After the peach gum expands, you may still find some black impurities attached to the surface. Remove it and wash it carefully under running water.

Some of the black impurities will drop from the peach gum after the soaking process, sinking at the bottom of the soaking bowl.

Now your peach gum is ready for cooking.

How to make a peach gum dessert

Peach gum is a perfect ingredient for dessert soup. Now let’s check how to make a lovely melt-in-mouth thickened Cantonese Tang Shui using rock sugar, dried dates, and goji berries.

1. clean your peach gum as per the instructions above.
2. Add the well-cleaned peach gum into a soup pot, and add enough water (we need to simmer for quite a long time). After the contents boil, cover the lid and slow down the fire, then simmer for around 1 hour until the soup is thickened well using the slowest fire.
3. Add red dates and goji berries as well as rock sugar. Continue cooking for 10 minutes.

How to serve

You can serve peach gum dessert either with or without milk. The ready-to-serve peach gum dessert soup has a lovely amber color, coming from its original ingredients.

Another popular way of serving peach gum dessert is by adding milk to it. Milk adds creaminess and improves both the flavors and texture greatly. I will suggest asking your guest to pour the milk in. You will be shocked at how beautiful when the two ingredients match. We record the process in the video, in a really fun and interesting way.

For vegan options, coconut milk is a good substitute for regular cow milk and it matches too.

Common Ingredients that can match well with peach gum

In addition to this peach gun dessert soup with red dates and goji berries, peach gum can be cooked along with papaya to make a papaya-flavored peach gum soup.

Sago can add extra funny and interesting peach gum soup. Learn how to cook sago at home.

Sometimes prepared peach gum also cooperates with savory soups with bones, tofu, and vegetables like a white radish.

What does peach gum taste like

If you taste the soaked peach gum, it has a very faint sweetness with some woody taste.
After cooking in desserts with other ingredients and usually sweeteners, you can feel a soften and melt into a mouth-tender gel. The texture is the best part of peach gum.

Also when the collagen protein of peach gum is well combined with the soup, it gives the soup a thickened texture similar to snow fungus soup.

I would love to describe the peach gum dessert soup as floral, grassy, herbaceous, and honey-like with a woody feeling, and a much more complex taste than other common Tang Shui.

We also have other similar dessert soups, remember to check it

1. Red bean soup
2. Snow fungus soup
3. Black sesame soup

Benefits of peach gum

Peach gum is a healthy food if you are fit in. Doctors of Chinese medicine highly recommend peach gum because it contains components including collagen, rhamnose, and galactose and further its health benefits including digestion improvement, immune boosting, and a good source of nutrition.

Many young girls believe that it can benefit to skin and help keep the body slim.

Aide effects

Peach gum is not easy to digest, and thus eating too much may cause problems to your stomach.

It has a cool property in Chinese traditional medicine, so don’t eat too much each time.

Afterthoughts

In conclusion, peach gum is a traditional Chinese ingredient that comes from peach trees. It is widely used in soups and desserts, working as the main ingredient or a thickening agent like other gel products from bones.

Chinese people love it because of its benefits to skin beauty, blood control, and reducing stress. For me, I love the gel texture the most. Hope you will love peach gum, it is a magic ingredient.