Herbal Detox Tea Recipe (With Video)

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Hey guys, this is Heather from healthyveganrecipes.net. Today, I’m going to share how to actually make herbal detox tea – a herbal concoction with medicinal herbs. All this month, if you’re following my nutrition blog at healthyeatingstartshere.com, I have been talking about detoxing and cleansing.

This week I’ve mentioned some specific medicinal herbs that you can use to help along the process of your body getting rid of toxins. So, I’m going to show you how to actually put these herbs together – show you a few of the ones that I like to use, and how to make them into something that you can put into the body.

A lot of them – if you think of herbs and you’re thinking of the green stuff, a lot of them aren’t actually green herbs, they are roots, barks and things like that you don’t eat necessarily.

So, you need to make them into something that you can process and the easiest way to do that at home is to buy whole herbs, and then what’ called a decoction in water.

First thing I’m going to show you are some of the herbs that I’m putting together for a cleanse for this herbal detox tea recipe. As I show you the herbs, I’m going to put them into the water, so I’ll show that first.

I’ve got six cups of water because I’m making this for Phil and me, usually you would do 3 cups at a time and that will last for about one day. You need to do this in a glass or ceramic pot, if you don’t have one – it is very important to do that, so you need to either get a glass kettle that you can put on the stove or glass or ceramic pot.

To start with, I’ve got some dandelion root, it’s one of the most detoxifying herbs and it works specifically on the gall bladder, liver and kidneys, which are your main organs of eliminating toxin from you body – so put a little bit of that in.

And then again, I’m making this herbal detox tea recipe for two servings. This one is marshmallow root, which I didn’t put on the list of the detoxifying herbs in my blog, but its soothes the digestion – the membranes inside your digestive system, so its not really a cleansing herb, it’s just that Phil and I have this imbalances that has something to do with our digestive track, so I’m putting this in for us, specifically.

The next one I got is a licorice root, its an interesting one because it works specifically on the adrenal glands and those are supper important in society right now, because they are heavily affected by stress. So, if you’ve got stress, make sure you include some licorice root.

It also has a whole bunch of other properties including a mild laxative, which is important if you’re doing cleanse or fast, it can get things moving through the system.

Another root I got here is burdock root, it is good for cleansing the blood and the kidneys. It works through the urinary system so it’s also a diuretic. It flushes water out of your system.

I also got a milk fissel, it’s actually pretty popular as an herb. It works to cleanse the liver mostly, but the liver cleanses the blood, so indirectly, it also cleanses the blood as well.

People actually grow milk fissel and collect the seeds. Phil and I got ours once, it was a long time consuming, actually a little bit painful process but when you buy it, actually pretty expensive, and so it’s worth it.

So, I’ve got some cardamom pods, which help the digestive system but I’m mostly putting this in just for flavor – sometimes it’s nice to have something that doesn’t taste gross.

Speaking of, cayenne – I’m not a fan of cayenne in general. I’m not too much into the spicy stuff, but cayenne is super cleansing for the blood and also helps eliminate fluids from your body.

I also have ginger, it’s probably the easiest one to find and you can pick it at the grocery store, just your regular ginger root. I’m just cutting off some slices and throwing it in there. Ginger works to stimulate the digestive system and it also helps the action of kidneys.

I’m putting these into cool water and then bringing that to a boil – no lid. Once it gets to a boil – you’re going to leave it boiling for 30 minutes. You want the water to reduce that’s why we’re not putting the lid on.

You can put the lid on before its coming into a boil, just to save energy but once it gets in to a boil, just take the lid off, let it reduce by about a third. If you’re starting with 3 cups of water, you want to wind-up with 2.

If you’re staring with 6 cups of water, you want to wind up with 4. So, this is been simmering away for 30 minutes – you can see the water level is down. Now, we need to strain this.

It’s generally not nice to drink the actually herbs – they don’t digest very well and they usually don’t taste that nice. Although, this herbal detox tea, smells pretty good with the ginger and the cardamom in there, so, if you are picking herbs and you never done them before, just go to the store and smell them.

If you smell one that smells pretty bad, you might avoid it or at least include another herb that taste better.

What I’m going to use to strain is, I’m going to put this is mason jar, this is going to be enough for one day. And then, I got a funnel and a strainer, all set to go.

It’s much better if you got a kettle or a pot with a spout because I got some spills going on here. You can see my decoction down here and the herbs all strained down there.

Phil and I are going to drink about 3 – 4 half-cup servings of this a day. This should just last for one day. If you’re making a larger batch, you need to store them in the fridge; it will only keep for a couple of days before it starts to go a little bad.

In terms of getting the herbs, I’m lucky I’ve been able to find them in the city that I live. Places that sell bulk herbs, you can go and buy what you need otherwise, you usually have to buy in half kilo or like one pound-type-bags, but, you can usually get all of the herbs that you want on online retailers – amazon is actually pretty good for this.

They stock some organic herbs that are very well produced. Hope you’ll enjoy that. I will post the directions and the list of herbs that I put in this herbal detox tea recipe on the website healthyveganrecipes.net.

If you’re interested in learning more about detoxing, cleansing or just nutrition, just head over to the nutrition blog at healthyeatingstartshere.com.