Cao Guo is the mature fruit of Cao Guo of the ginger family. Grass nuts perennial herb, born in the ditch under the forest, distributed in Guangxi and southern Yunnan region, the fruit is reddish-brown when ripe harvested, sun-dried or dried, or scalded with boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes, and then sun-dried or dried. The earliest history of the grass fruit in the Ming Dynasty, China’s Yunnan is the main origin of the grass fruit, so far there have been more than 200 years of history.

Taste and odor: pungent; warm in nature.

Attributes: to the spleen, stomach meridian.

Effects: Drying dampness, warming the middle, dispelling phlegm and intercepting malaria. Mainly used for cold pain in the epigastric region, nausea and vomiting, plumpness in the diaphragm, diarrhea, dysentery and malaria. Used for cold and dampness internal obstruction, epigastric distension, nausea and vomiting, malaria, cold and heat.

Grasshopper is one of the bulk varieties of Chinese herbs used for both medicinal and food purposes, and the amount of food consumed is greater than the amount of medicinal use.
Cao Guo is actually the fruit of a spice plant. Has a special rich spicy flavor, can remove the fishy taste, enhance appetite, is a good cooking ingredients, known as food flavoring in the “one of the five spices”, due to the similarity with the poppy long, often in the hot pot store is mistaken for “contraband” poppy.

Cooking use: used in the modulation of fine brine and cooking meat, dishes and other aroma, such as beef boiled in grasshopper; Yunnan specialties, such as sealing chicken also used in grasshopper to increase the aroma.

The same with poppy husk: are the size of corn, are oblong.
Difference with poppy shells: poppy shells have radial arrangement at the top of the disc-shaped residual stigmas; grass fruits do not have obvious radial arrangement at the top of the disc-shaped residual stigmas, and the grain of the fruit shells, there are significant longitudinal grooves and ribs, unlike poppy shells, the surface of the smoother.

Food Value
Grasshopper is a kind of spice plant, the whole plant has a special rich spicy flavor, often used to cook dishes, can remove fishy and dingy, enhance the flavor of dishes, thereby increasing appetite, is a good cooking spices, is known as food seasoning “one of the five spices”.

In the cooking of fish and meat dishes such as adding fruits of grass its flavor is better; modulation of brine with a little fruits of grass can increase the aroma; stewed mutton when adding fruits of grass can make the mutton fragrant and tasty, but also can drive away the smell of mutton.

In addition, in the hot pot restaurant, poppy husk has been used as a hot pot aromatizer, now has entered the key monitoring “black list”, grass fruit has become the best alternative to the hot pot aroma.

At present, the grass fruits used for food products include dried grass fruits, grass fruits powder, grass fruits as the ingredients of the seasoning (including compound spices seasoning packet and stewed fish, marinated chicken, beef and mutton seasoning, etc.), these products are mainly used in food for flavoring and enhancing the aroma.

In addition, the young grass fruits can be used as cold fruits after pickling and soaking, which is crisp and delicious, and has been sold in the market at present; the newly extracted shoots of the grass fruits are good vegetables, which are delicious and savory;

Adopting supercritical CO2 extraction technology and molecular distillation to refine the essential oil of grass fruit has been sold on the network, which can be applied to meat products, convenient rice noodles, condiments and puffed food, and is the spice of savory flavors.