Joshanda Recipe at Home: What Is in It and Who Should Skip It (Video)

Transcript

Joshanda at Home

Ever wondered what's inside that warm, spiced tea you hear about in winter? Let’s explore a simple homemade joshanda.

At a glance

Joshanda is a boiled herbal decoction, traditionally used to warm the body, ease a raw throat and loosen a stuffy head for a short while. It’s a comforting drink, not a replacement for medicine, and it isn’t suitable for every person.

Typical ingredients

The core of any joshanda follows the Unani tradition. Unnab, which is dried jujube, soothes a raw throat. Sweet violet flowers, called banafsha, target the chest and head. Licorice root, or mulethi, adds sweetness and coats the throat. Other common additions are gaozaban leaf, khatmi seed, fennel, ginger, black pepper, clove, sometimes cinnamon and holy basil.

Home recipe

To make two cups, measure five dried unnab, a heaped teaspoon of dried banafsha and about a gram of whole mulethi sticks. Add half a litre of cold water, bring it to a boil, then lower the flame and let it simmer uncovered for twelve to fifteen minutes until the liquid reduces to roughly three hundred millilitres and turns a deep amber. Strain through a tea strainer, press the herbs gently with a spoon and discard them. Serve the warm brew slowly.

Traditional view

In Unani medicine, a cold was seen as cold, moist matter settling in the head and chest. Joshanda, a hot and dry decoction, was prescribed to ‘ripen’ that phlegm so it could be expelled. The classic formula, unnab, banafsha, gaozaban and khatmi, sometimes with sapistan, was taken warm on an empty stomach. The logic is traditional, but the practical effect is that a warm, aromatic, slightly sweet drink can be soothing.

What it does

A cup of joshanda can warm you up, coat a scratchy throat, and the steam plus pepper can loosen a blocked nose for a while. It also helps you get a few hundred millilitres of fluid if you’re not drinking enough, and the ritual of sipping slowly can encourage rest. But it won’t shorten a seven-to-ten-day cold, cure a bacterial chest infection, a sinus infection, or the flu, nor should it replace paracetamol or other medicines.

Who should avoid

The ingredient that can cause trouble is mulethi, or licorice root, because it contains glycyrrhizin, which may raise blood pressure and lower potassium when used daily. A cup or two for a few days is usually safe for a healthy adult, but regular winter use or consumption by someone with already high pressure isn’t advisable. Packet joshandas rarely list how much licorice they contain, so making your own lets you control the amount.

Take care if

If you have high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney disease, or take diuretics or digoxin, use a version without mulethi and limit yourself to one cup a day for at most a week. Pregnant or breastfeeding people should skip mulethi entirely and check with their antenatal doctor before drinking any herbal decoction daily; banafsha and gaozaban lack established safety records in pregnancy, so a simple brew of unnab, ginger and fennel is wiser. For diabetes, avoid the sweetened packet mixes and make your own without added sugar. Children can have a small warm cup, but keep an eye on any lingering symptoms.

Tonight's tip

While the kettle is on for everyone else’s chai, bring the joshanda pot to a gentle boil. Strain it, then sip one cup slowly over ten minutes with your feet tucked under the razai. Put the second cup in the fridge for the morning. If the throat is the main complaint, gargle first with warm salt water, half a teaspoon in a quarter litre, so the joshanda soothes a clean throat.

Thanks for watching

For the full recipe and details, visit thecareonline.com, remember this is not medical advice.