Dit Dao Jow

Dit Dao Jow - The recipe that I will give you is a simple one that uses common Chinese herbs that are for the most part easy to get in herb catalogs or hebal stores if you have a Chinatown or wholistic community near you.

(these are the botanical names and Chinese names) 1 oz. = 30 grams

  • 1 bottle of strong vodka, gin or Chinese rice wine
  • Artemesia (Liu ji nu) - 5 g
  • Borneol (Bingpian) - 1 g
  • Carthamus (Honghua) - 5 g
  • Catechu (Ercha) - 8 g
  • Cinnabar (Zhusha) - 5 g
  • Cirsium (DaJi) - 1 g
  • Dragon’s Blood (Xuejie) - 30 g
  • Mastic (Ruxiang)- 5 g
  • Musk (Shexiang) - 1 g
  • Myrrh (Moyao) - 5 g
  • Pinellia (ShengBanXia) - 5 g

Take all ingredients and grind into a fine powder, and the whole bottle of vodka or gin. Mix well and run into the injured area. The beauty of this particular recipe is that you don’t have to bury it for 35 days to two months before you can use it. Classically when you made Jow it had to be buried underground for an extended period of time before it was ready to be used. There was no magical/mystical reasoning behind it. Sunlight and heat oxidized the herbs and changed the chemical properties so, keeping in mind it’s around the year 1700, where are you going to store this stuff when you need a dark cool dry place. And what do you use to ferment and age your herbal combination to get the most out of your ingredients - alcohol. That’s why a 100 year old Scotch Whiskey is supposed to be so good.

If you desire to have the herbs soak, pour the combination into a dark glass container and place it in a closet or cupboard where it shouldn’t get too hot, and periodically shake the liniment once or twice week. You should note that if you do this the traditional way then the herbs are loosely ground, and not into a powder. And the longer they sit in the bottle the stronger the Jow becomes. The store bought Jow never has any of the herbs at the bottom of the bottle that they come in. Also some Jow is sold in plastic bottles, and over time the plastic starts to break down into the herbal formula. And some Jow is even sold in clear bottles with no way to know how long it’s been in there. A decent Jow should look like soy sauce in color and have a slight alcohol, medicinal smell. Please note this Jow recipe may not be as dark or “smelly” due to the quality of herbs, time to soak before usage, cooking properties of some of the herbs, combinations of the specific herbs or the specific usage properties. This is a “fast” formula, it’s original intent is to made now to use now, not in a month or two.

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