Chinese Confinement Recipes: Pork, Papaya, Dried Squid Soup

Chinese Confinement Recipes: Pork, Papaya, Dried Squid Soup

• June 01, 2021

Confinement Recipes for Week 1-3

For the first few weeks right after giving birth, confinement food is very basic and focuses on food that is easy to digest and avoids a lot of food and condiments that is believed to affect healing of the wounds. If it's a natural birth, follow this for 2 weeks and for caesareans follow for 3 weeks. They generally follow these rules.

1) Meals need to be mainly steamed, low in salt and low in oil

2) Avoid soya sauce, eggs, beef to help with scar healing

3) Avoid cold or raw foods to stop 'wind' from entering the body

4) Stick to chicken, pork and fish as the protein element of the meals

5) Whilst bleeding is still happening down below, do not eat ginger, red dates or red beans as they are foods that help with blood circulation and replenishment 

This pork, papaya and dried squid soup is good to drink right from birth and long past confinement. It's so tasty and good for you. Papaya is said to help produce more breastmilk too. Having soup with dinner every day is ideal but I found it impossible trying to make this for myself daily, so soup was a 2-3 times a week affair. 

I added in carrots for extra sweetness to the soup. 

Ingredients:

1 pack of pork ribs (approx 750g)

1 dried and salted squid 

1 papaya

2 red carrots

4 pints of water

1 tsp salt

Directions:
1) In a clean saucepan, add in 4 pints of water and bring to a boil. Whilst this is boiling, use another saucepan for blanching the ribs
2) In the 2nd saucepan, boil enough water to cover the ribs. Once boiling, add pork ribs to blanch. After 3 minutes, the water should have turned scummy. Drain the water and rinse the blanched pork
3) Add the blanched pork to the large saucepan of boiling water (doesn't matter if the water is not yet boiling)
4) Wash the squid well to get rid of excess salt and add to the pot
5) Peel, deseed and chop the papaya and carrots and add to the pot
6) Bring the pan to a boil and then turn heat to low and simmer for 1.5-2 hours. Add 1 teaspoon of salt once heat is off and serve alongside your main meal

If you're in week 1-3 of the confinement, avoid dipping the soup leftovers in soya sauce.

Take a look at all my other confinement recipes