Chinese liquorice
The liquorice of northern China, Mongolia and Central Asia, and a different species from the Mediterranean plant that supplies European confectionery. Both are sold as liquorice root, both are intensely sweet, and both the trade and the pharmacopoeias distinguish them.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Glycyrrhiza uralensis
- Family
- Fabaceae
- Part used
- Root, Rhizome
- Origin
- Northern China, Mongolia, Siberia and Central Asia — steppe, dune margin and desert edge
- Drunk in
- Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xinjiang, Mongolia
Character
Intensely sweet, earthy and faintly bitter at the end. The root itself tastes of sweetness and earth rather than of the anise that flavours most European liquorice sweets — that note is added in confectionery and is not in the plant.
Notes: liquorice, earth, dried bean, hay
History
Wild collection from the steppe was the historical supply and remains significant. Collection pressure on wild stands — and the erosion that digging out a deep-rooted plant causes on fragile grassland — has been a recognised problem, and cultivation in Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang has expanded in response to it.
How it is drunk
Gan cao is among the most frequently used items in Chinese herbal practice and turns up in a very large share of prepared formulas. In the kitchen it goes into braises, marinades and preserved fruit, and it is added in small quantities to household drinks, where it sweetens and rounds whatever else is in the pot.
Production
Roots and stolons are lifted from plants of three years or more, cleaned and cut into slices across the grain. Peeled and unpeeled material are graded separately, and honey-fried gan cao — sliced root turned in honey over heat — is a distinct prepared form traded under its own name and at its own price.
Preparation
Decoction · Blended with tea
Boiling and decoction
1–3 g/100 ml · 98–100 °C · 15 min
What gets confused
Three species are traded as liquorice root: Glycyrrhiza glabra (Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, which TeaHQ holds separately), G. uralensis (this plant) and G. inflata. Chinese pharmacopoeial material admits more than one of them, so “gan cao” names a group of accepted species rather than a single one, and a slice in a jar cannot be told apart by eye.
Common mistakes
- Dosing it as though it were a bulk ingredient. A slice or two sweetens a whole pot.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Chinese liquorice is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.