To use Chinese herbs, basically you need to know Chinese! All books are written in Chinese! please post any particular herbs or problems you like to fix, I'll find it and explain to you.

Hi Thore,

the only page where they indicate something about the cooking time is in German: http://www.china-park.de/arzneien/leonuri-herba/

If you scroll down you will find:
"Kochzeit:
20 Minuten"

which means:
"boiling time
20 minutes"

Sometimes they don´t write about the time, but mostly they do.

My TCM doctor told me to first soak the herbs for at least one hour. After this you heat up the herbs till cooking and then put the heat lower. After 20 min you empty out the tea and cook the hears another 20 min so that all the good things in the herbs are used. Then you fill the tea in bottels. Then you can use this for the next 6 days. Each time you want to drink it, you put hot (but not too hot) water to the essence to warm it up.

As I understand, most of the hard herbs have to be boiled for 20 min. The softer ones you put them into the pot at the end of the second cooking time.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Ingrid

Is anyone familiar with the use and preparation of Chinese Herbs?

I'm interested in using them, both as supplements and for cooking. I have a hard time finding specific preparation instructions for individual herbs online.

Is anyone knowledgable in this arena and/or could you refer me to a book that would explain each herb and their specific preparation instructions?

Most books I found at the bookstore cover the use of these herbs in relation to specific ailments, and don't even breakdown the preparation of the herbs they recommend - which would put me in exactly my current situation.

Thanks in advance for your help.