How to use black chicken to treat weakness and nourish the body.
Black chickens (also known as black chickens, black-legged chickens, or five-toed chickens) are rare and highly nutritious. Traditional Chinese medicine frequently uses black chicken as an ingredient in many remedies under names such as "o ke" or "o ke cot".
Characteristics of black chickens
Black chickens are a type of chicken with a short body, small beak, short neck, comb, and greenish-purple ears.
Black chickens don't actually have black feathers as many people think; their entire body is covered in white feathers. Aside from their wings, their whole body is covered in soft, velvety feathers. They have a small tuft of feathers protruding from their head, and many short, fine feathers extending from below their beaks to the sides of their faces.
Black chickens are so named because their entire skin, meat, bones, and beak are black. Although they have short wings, the feathers on their wings are separated, giving them quite good flying abilities.
Black chickens also have a very distinctive feature: their feet are feathered and have five claws, with very thick and abundant feathers on their soles.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, black chicken has a sweet and salty taste, a neutral nature, and acts on the Liver and Kidney meridians. Its effects include nourishing yin and reducing heat, tonifying the middle and quenching thirst, and benefiting the kidneys and nourishing yin. Black chicken is often used to treat weakness, emaciation, internal heat, excessive thirst, and spleen deficiency leading to frequent loose stools; it is also used to nourish pregnant women and treat postpartum hemorrhage and leucorrhea.
Traditional remedies using black chickens
- Okay, completely:It treats weakness, fever, muscle atrophy, fatigue and lack of strength in the limbs, hot and uncomfortable palms, soles, and chest, dry throat, flushed cheeks, frequent sobbing, hot flashes, night sweats, poor appetite, and coughing up blood.
Ingredients:Ginseng, astragalus, bupleurum, platycodon, coptis, phellodendron, angelica, poria cocos, rehmannia glutinosa, rehmannia glutinosa (raw), peony, schisandra chinensis, anemarrhena asphodeloides, fritillaria, chuanxiong, atractylodes macrocephala, 20g each.
+ Preparation method:The herbs are ground into powder. Use a black rooster weighing about 1kg or more, preferably a young, healthy one. Remove the feathers and blood, wash it thoroughly, and place the herbs inside its belly. Sew it shut with thread. Put some good quality vinegar in a pot, place the prepared chicken inside, pour in enough wine to cover its back by about 3cm, and add the giblets alongside. Cook until very tender, then remove, dry both the chicken and herbs, grind them into a fine powder, and use the broth along with the paste to form pills the size of a tung tree seed.
+ How to use:Take 100 pills each time, on an empty stomach, and wash them down with rice water or cooled boiled water.
- Okay, completely:Treating dysentery caused by inability to eat or drink, due to excessive use of astringent medications that damage the stomach; upon hearing the sound of food, the patient immediately closes their mouth tightly, and their hands and feet become cold.
+ Preparation method:Take one black chicken, remove the feathers and entrails, then simmer it with star anise, galangal, red beans, dried tangerine peel, white ginger, Sichuan peppercorns, and salt until very tender.
+ How to use:Take the chicken out and let the patient smell it, so they can appreciate the aroma. If they want to eat it, give them the broth to drink as an appetizer. This remedy can also treat chronic dysentery.
- A medicinal formula from the Compendium of Materia Medica:Treats spleen deficiency causing loose stools.
+ Preparation method:Take one black hen, wash it thoroughly. Use 80g of cardamom and 2 cardamom pods, char them to ashes, put them inside the chicken's belly, tie it up, and cook until done.
+ How to use:Eat when you're hungry.
- Another remedy found in the Compendium of Materia Medica:It treats vaginal discharge in women (mixed white and red) and in men (nocturnal emissions, cloudy urine, and lower body weakness).
+ Preparation method:20g each of ginkgo biloba, lotus seeds, and red rice, and 4g of black pepper, are ground into a fine powder. A black chicken is cleaned as usual, and the powdered herbs are placed inside its belly before cooking.
+ How to use:Eat when you're hungry.
