The Dilemma: Should I squeeze lime or blend with tamarind for Water Spinach Soup to be perfectly done?

When it comes to water spinach, surely many of you are familiar with the boiled water spinach with lemon or pounded tamarind. Many people don’t like to eat water spinach, but every week, they have to boil water spinach 3-4 times just to have a sour soup to eat with rice smoothly.

In recent days, many women have wondered: Should we squeeze lemon or pound tamarind into boiled water spinach to make it “perfect”?

Both lemon and tamarind are sour fruits, but do they make a difference when combined with boiled water spinach? In this article, we will help you answer this question.

Tamarind helps enhance the cooling effect of boiled water spinach

Boiled water spinach has little flavor, as it is just boiled water spinach. When squeezed with lemon or pounded with tamarind, it adds a refreshing sour taste, making it more appetizing.

In fact, boiled water spinach has more prominent benefits than its taste. Water spinach contains a lot of cellulose, lignin, and pectin, of which lignin has anti-inflammatory effects, and pectin can promote the excretion process and detoxify the body.

This popular vegetable also contains a lot of vitamin C and carotene, which help enhance physical strength. In addition, water spinach has been proven to help prevent gastric cancer, effectively prevent constipation, and reduce blood sugar.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, water spinach also has a cooling and detoxifying effect, stimulates digestion and bowel movements, and is considered an effective remedy for health and healing many digestive diseases.

If combined with tamarind, the cooling effect of the soup will be enhanced by tamarind’s cooling property, which effectively cools the body in the summer. Tamarind is also used to make many refreshing drinks in the summer because of this characteristic. Tamarind is peeled, then put into the pot of water for boiling spinach, and boiled until it boils again before removing it.

Afterward, the tamarind is pounded into a paste, and the sour water from the fruit is mixed into the boiled water spinach, enhancing the sour taste.

Lemon helps you check the quality of water spinach

As for lemon, the method is simpler. You just need to cut the lemon in half, squeeze it and remove the seeds. The use of lemon is also considered a way to check the quality of water spinach.

When lemon is squeezed into boiled water spinach, the water changes from green to light red or yellow. This phenomenon indicates that the water spinach is safe. According to experts, the water spinach contains Ca(OH)2, a green dye-reactive substance. Lemon contains a relatively high level of weak organic acid, citric acid, so squeezing lemon will change the acidity of the water.

This causes the color of the water spinach to change from green to yellow or red, depending on the acid concentration. If the water doesn’t change color, it is likely that the water spinach still contains residual harmful chemicals.

In conclusion: Squeezing lemon or pounding tamarind into water spinach soup is both acceptable!

From the information above, it can be seen that lemon or tamarind does not affect the taste of the water spinach soup. The only difference lies in their uses.

Tamarind helps enhance the cooling effect of boiled water spinach, while lemon helps you check the safety of water spinach.

Moreover, tamarind is a seasonal fruit, while lemon is available all year round. Therefore, if you don’t have tamarind, squeezing lemon into the boiled water spinach is also fine. The soup is still delicious and goes perfectly with rice.