Job's Tears Seed

The seeds of Coix lacryma-jobi (the famous “Job’s tears”), an ancestral cereal of Asian cookery.

Harvested at maturity then hulled, they come as cream-white grains the size of a maize kernel, with floury flesh and a mild, faintly nutty taste.

Much used in traditional Chinese, Korean and Japanese cookery (porridges, soups, desserts, traditional spirits such as Coix shochu).

A cereal on the border between the food and the plant of the pharmacopoeia.

One of the mildest and most approachable herbs of the freeing register. Traditionally used to carry off Dampness where Heat has a share in it, within the register of the Earth Phase, and to free the passage through a frame (Jin Gu) clogged by Dampness.

An everyday food, for those who wish to bring the pharmacopoeia into their cooking.

• Everyday cooking: 30 to 100 g in congee, simmered soups, rice and desserts (soak for 2 hours before cooking to shorten the cooking time)
• Decoction: 9 to 30 g, simmer for 40 minutes minimum
• Roasted form (Chao Yi Yi Ren): a thermally more neutral version, better suited to Cold constitutions
• Si Miao San: “powder of the four marvels”, for Heat-Dampness of the lower region

To be used in moderation in cases of already very loose stools.