Chinese Yam

A starchy tuber used in Cantonese soups and congee — often dried for long cooking.

4 recipes use this ingredient

TCM benefits of Chinese Yam

山藥 · shān yào

How chinese yam is seen in traditional Chinese food therapy. Traditional context, not medical advice.

Chinese yam is classed as sweet and neutral, gentle rather than strongly warming or cooling, and associated with the Spleen, Lung and Kidney.
Wang Shixiong's 1861 food-therapy handbook counts it as a grain and a vegetable at once, a dual role you still see in Cantonese soups and congee.
Dried slices, 淮山, go into long-simmered soups, and a Cantonese soup survey lists a Dioscorea yam with fox nut, walnut and ginger in a pork kidney soup. Fresh yam is added later.
The same handbook says to leave it out where there is swelling or stagnation, so it is traditionally eaten sparingly by anyone who already feels bloated.