Winter Melon (Ash Gourd): Benefits, Nutrition, Uses & Recipes

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Winter melon (Benincasa hispida), also called ash gourd or wax gourd, is a classic cooling food of Chinese medicine and Ayurveda.23 For centuries, both traditions have used this large, mild gourd to clear heat, quench thirst and move excess water, and it's about 96% water itself, with just 17 calories in a raw cup.1

If you tend to run hot, feel thirsty all the time, get overheated and puffy, or have a stomach that sits heavy and unsettled, it makes sense to look at what's behind that. As I wrote in Ancient Remedies, a diet high in processed foods and sugar, burning the candle at both ends and chronic stress cause heat in your body, which often corresponds to inflammation, an underlying driver of just about every chronic health condition.5 Winter melon works with your body's own cooling system: it hydrates you, helps clear the heat and the water that build up, and is gentle on your gut. My Anti-Inflammatory Reset puts the order plainly: remove the fuel, cool the fire, let the body heal.6

The name winter melon fits how well it keeps. A whole winter melon, armored in a chalk-white waxy rind, lasts for months after the late-summer harvest, so it's still sitting in the pantry when winter comes.78 My seasonal rule for summer is to opt for cooling foods like cucumber, melon and salads with little seasoning,5 and winter melon fits it well. In the cold months, the traditional way to eat it is in a warm soup, with warm ingredients added to balance its cool nature,23 and that's exactly how I tell people to handle a cooling food in winter.9

Did you know?

• Winter melons are among the largest fruits in the gourd family, growing up to a meter (about 3 feet) long and more than 40 kilograms (about 88 pounds).7

• In China, winter melon soup is often served in the scooped-out gourd itself, carved after the waxy coating is scraped off.3

• In north India and Bangladesh, crushed mung beans and winter melon are made into bori, small pieces that are sun-dried and added to curries.3

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What is winter melon (ash gourd)?

At the store, you'll often see winter melon cut into wedges, but on the vine, a young winter melon is green and covered in fine hairs. As it matures, it grows a hard rind dusted with a chalk-white waxy bloom, almost like a light frost, and that bloom gives it the name wax gourd and helps the melon keep so long after harvest.7 The fruit can be round or long like a watermelon, and when you cut one open, you'll find white, spongy, juicy flesh around a core of flat seeds.7

Take a bite raw and you'll find it mild, a little like cucumber or the white part of a watermelon rind. Cook it and it turns soft and translucent and soaks up whatever broth it's simmered in, the way a sponge soaks up water, so it carries whatever flavors you put in the pot. That's why it has been a soup vegetable in China, India and Southeast Asia for so long.3

A short history of winter melon

People have been eating winter melon for thousands of years, and China has grown it for more than 2,000.23 Its dried peel entered a Chinese materia medica, one of the classic books of medicinal foods and herbs, in A.D. 974 as a remedy to clear water held in the lower belly, promote urination and quench thirst. More than a thousand years later, it's still listed in today's Chinese Pharmacopoeia.2 In India, it's eaten as a winter season vegetable, and Ayurveda counts it among the foods that nourish the mind.310 In China, candied winter melon is a sweet for the New Year festivals and a filling for mooncakes, and in Vietnam, winter melon soup is a traditional food for nursing mothers.3

Winter melon nutrition facts (per cup)

Calculated from USDA FoodData Central FDC ID 170069 (waxgourd, raw) at the entry's 1-cup weight of 132 grams; % Daily Value uses FDA adult label values.1

On your plate, a cup of winter melon adds water, fiber and vitamin C to your meal for almost no calories, with some riboflavin and zinc besides,1 so it's the kind of vegetable you can pile into a soup without a second thought. Cooking changes the numbers a little: USDA's cooked entry gives a cup (175 grams) 1.03 milligrams of zinc (9% of the daily value) and 1.75 grams of fiber (6%), along with the vitamin C and the 345 micrograms of lutein and zeaxanthin above.11

You may have noticed that sodium and potassium are missing from the table, and that's on purpose. When researchers analyzed the flesh directly, they found 0.14 to 6 milligrams of sodium and 77 to 131 milligrams of potassium per 100 grams.3 USDA's raw entry lists 111 milligrams of sodium and 6 milligrams of potassium per 100 grams, far from what direct analyses of the flesh found, so rather than hand you two sets of numbers that disagree that much, we left both out of the table above.1

How winter melon works in your body

If you've ever felt hot, heavy and puffy all at once, a bit like a muggy summer day inside your body, Chinese medicine has a name for it: heat and damp, damp being the water your body holds on to. When they build up, they show up as thirst, feeling overheated, puffiness, heaviness and an unsettled stomach. As I wrote in my Anti-Inflammatory Reset, "In TCM, lingering Heat and Damp are what modern medicine would call chronic inflammation: swelling, redness, heaviness, flares that come and go."6 Winter melon is the classic food for clearing both, and Chinese medicine has long used it for high blood pressure too.12 A bowl of it makes its way from your plate to your blood vessels like this:

Cook it the traditional way, warm and with warming ingredients like ginger, and winter melon does that work for everyone at your table.29

Winter melon benefits: what is it good for?

Start with what the traditions asked of it, cooling heat and moving water, and you can follow its benefits out to your gut and your blood vessels:

Winter melon in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda

Two great healing traditions, working on opposite sides of the Himalayas, came to the same view of winter melon: it cools heat, quenches thirst and moves water.23

Dong gua in Chinese medicine

In Chinese medicine, winter melon is dong gua, and its dried peel, dong gua pi, is the part written into the materia medica. The peel's nature is slightly cool and its taste sweet, and it's tied to the spleen and small intestine, which in plain English means your digestion and the way your gut handles water.2 The peel is the medicine and the flesh is the food, and classic food-therapy dishes use both: a soup of winter melon peel and black beans to clear heat and remove dampness, and a soup of crucian carp, a fish with fins and scales, and winter melon peel to ease swelling and the bloating that follows irregular meals.2 In Korea, the peel even goes into kimchi.2 Here's the peel's profile at a glance:2

The classic pairing in that profile matters, because traditional cooks add warm ingredients so the food suits the person eating it.2 Matching warming and cooling foods to the person is part of how I practice, too:27

Chinese medicine classes winter melon with the cooling foods, the same family as the cucumbers, melons, zucchini, celery and mung beans on my own cooling-foods list.5

Kushmanda in Ayurveda

In Ayurveda, winter melon goes by kushmanda, and its job there sounds a lot like its job in China. The fruit is called sweet and cooling and is used for indigestion, peptic ulcer, urinary complaints, diabetes and fever, for "balancing the body heat," and for an excess of pitta, the hot, fiery dosha.3 I've written that pitta types are focused and intense but may lean toward inflammation, and that they benefit from cooling foods like cucumbers and leafy greens.28 If that sounds like you, a warm bowl of winter melon soup is an easy way to bring one more of those foods into your week.

Ayurveda also counts kushmanda among its medhya rasayanas, foods that nourish and renew the mind. One classic preparation, kushmanda ghrita, cooks ghee with the fruit's juice and licorice root.10 In a study in India with no comparison group, 35 of 40 adults with depression finished a month of 20 mL a day, and they scored better on depression and anxiety rating scales.10

How to use winter melon (and how to cook it)

Winter melon's size can look daunting, but it's easy to cook once you've cut into one, and it works in almost any savory dish with a broth or sauce for it to soak up.

Buying and storing. Look for it at Asian and Indian grocers and at farmers markets in late summer and fall, whole or in wedges. A whole melon should feel heavy for its size when you pick it up, with a firm rind and its powdery bloom intact. Kept whole in a cool, dry place, it lasts for months, and in a Florida study, winter melons stored for 120 days still made juice with a nutritional profile comparable to freshly harvested fruit.8 Once you cut it, wrap the pieces and refrigerate them for a few days.

Prepping. Cut the melon into slabs, slice off the rind, scoop out the soft, seedy center and cut the white flesh into cubes, then taste a small raw piece. It should taste mild and fresh, and the safety section below explains why that little test matters.

Cooking. Simmer it in broth, steam it, braise it or add it to a stir-fry until it turns translucent and just tender, and keep an eye on it, because cooked too long, it collapses into mush. Worried that a cooling food will leave you chilled? A cooling food is absolutely fine when you warm it up and eat it as part of a soup, like a chicken vegetable soup, or when you add ginger, which is warming and helps combat some of that cooling.9 When you're cooling heat, my guidance is to eat more boiled, steamed or raw foods than baked, deep-fried, roasted or barbecued ones,5 and winter melon suits the first three.

Winter melon recipes

Here are four ways to bring winter melon into your kitchen, starting with the soup it's famous for. If you've seen winter melon soup on a menu, it may have come with cured meats or shellfish, as many traditional versions do. These build their flavor with bone broth, mushrooms, ginger and spices instead, and each one keeps the old balance of warm cooking for a cool food.

Winter melon soup with ginger and bone broth

This is the classic to start with, rebuilt around chicken bone broth. I've had patients do a bone broth fast, drinking just bone broth and herbal tea, and a good broth is the backbone of this soup.29

Fresh ash gourd juice

In China and Southeast Asia, winter melon juice is prized for its cooling, water-moving properties.7 A glass of fresh juice each morning is also the form the indigestion pilot above used.143 Make it on hot days, especially if you run hot, and drink it cool rather than ice-cold.

Lightly sweetened winter melon tea

If you've ordered winter melon tea at a bubble tea shop, you've had something closer to a dessert, because bottled and bubble tea shop winter melon tea starts with a syrup of winter melon cooked down with brown or cane sugar. I'd be very careful with cane sugar: it's still sugar, with very few nutrients, and honey is a far superior option, used sparingly. Scripture puts it well: "Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee" (Proverbs 25:16).30 Cutting sweets is also part of how my Anti-Inflammatory Reset drains damp,6 so this version lets the melon and ginger carry the flavor, with a little raw honey or Manuka honey stirred in at the end. A splash of coconut milk turns it into a milk tea.

Winter melon and mung bean dal

In north India and Bangladesh, winter melon is paired with mung beans,3 and mung beans sit on my cooling-foods list too.5 Like kitchari, this dal is soft and easy on your stomach, and the cumin and ginger bring the warmth.

How much winter melon should you eat?

For a sense of scale, the 12-week trial used a drink made with 2.5 grams of pulp extract a day, while the indigestion pilot used 200 mL (a little under a cup) of fresh juice each morning for 30 days and the blood sugar test used a single 250 mL glass.41416 So the juice studies used about one ordinary glass, the same kind you'd pour for yourself on a hot day.

Winter melon side effects: who should eat it warm

At normal amounts, winter melon is a gentle food. Rodent studies of a high-dose extract, including 90 days in rats, found no harm, and three months of fresh juice didn't change blood counts or blood chemistry in animals.3123 Still, a few people do better eating it warm, or leaving it out.

If you run cold. Chinese medicine counts winter melon among the cooling foods. For people with weak digestion, long-term use of something this cool can tip the balance, like pouring cold water into a bath that's already lukewarm, so traditional cooks add warm ingredients to it.2 In my show's episode on hypothyroidism, I said, "All the time, I work with patients with hypothyroidism who are eating a lot of salads and a lot of raw and cold foods that will make them worse."32 If you have hypothyroidism, IBS with diarrhea or cold hands and feet, you don't have to give winter melon up, but eat it cooked and warm, in broth with ginger, and save the raw juice for hot weather.

Taste it first. Gourds that taste bitter carry cucurbitacins, the gourd family's bitter compounds, and in India, extremely bitter bottle gourd juice has caused severe illness and deaths, with no known antidote.33 We found no such case from winter melon, and a good one tastes mild, so taste a small raw piece before you juice or cook it, and if it's bitter, throw it out.

Allergy. A case report from Japan describes anaphylaxis to winter melon in a person sensitized to ragweed pollen.34 If ragweed or melons give you allergy symptoms, decide with a practitioner who knows your allergy history before you try it. Stop eating it at any itching or swelling in your mouth, and treat trouble breathing or a swelling throat as an emergency: call 911 right away.

Interaction check: Low. None is documented at food amounts. Concentrated forms are another matter: the extract drink lowered diastolic pressure, and the peel is a traditional diuretic.42 If you take a diuretic (such as hydrochlorothiazide), a blood pressure medicine (such as amlodipine) or a diabetes medicine (such as metformin) and want to use an extract or a peel tea, start small and let your doctor know, since the effects could add up. Concentrated extracts haven't been studied in pregnancy, so while you're pregnant or nursing, enjoy winter melon as a food.

The bottom line

Winter melon: frequently asked questions

References

1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Waxgourd, (chinese preserving melon), raw. FDC ID 170069 (SR Legacy, NDB 11593; 1 cup cubes = 132 g). Accessed October 27, 2026.
2. Zhang M, Lei J, Wang Y, Zhang J, Liu D. Ethnopharmacology, phytochemistry and pharmacology of Benincasae Exocarpium: A review. Chin Herb Med. 2023;15(1):15-26. doi:10.1016/j.chmed.2022.10.001
3. Islam MT, Quispe C, El-Kersh DM, Shill MC, Bhardwaj K, Bhardwaj P, et al. A Literature-Based Update on Benincasa hispida (Thunb.) Cogn.: Traditional Uses, Nutraceutical, and Phytopharmacological Profiles. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2021;2021:6349041. doi:10.1155/2021/6349041
4. Zin CAJCM, Ishak WRW, Khan NAK, Mohamed WMIW. Efficacy of a Benincasa hispida powdered drink in improving metabolic control in patients with type 2 diabetes: A placebo-controlled study. Int J Health Sci (Qassim). 2024;18(5):16-27.
5. Axe J. Ancient Remedies: Secrets to Healing with Herbs, Essential Oils, CBD, and the Most Powerful Natural Medicine in History. Little, Brown Spark (Hachette Book Group); 2021 ("Cold and Heat": excess heat, inflammation and the cooling foods list, p. 45; food preparation, p. 46; "Eat according to the season," pp. 84-85).
6. Axe J. The Anti-Inflammatory Reset: The 30-Day Healing Protocol. DrAxe.com protocol. 2026 (p. 10, "Functional Medicine & TCM Lens": lingering heat and damp as chronic inflammation; "Clear Heat with greens and bitter herbs; drain Damp by cutting sweets and greasy food"; remove the fuel, cool the fire, let the body heal).
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8. Bai J, Rosskopf EN, Jeffries KA, Zhao W, Plotto A. Soil Amendment and Storage Effect the Quality of Winter Melons (Benincasa hispida (Thunb) Cogn.) and Their Juice. Foods. 2023;12(1):209. doi:10.3390/foods12010209
9. Axe J. How to Hydrate Your Brain, Boost Energy & End Brain Fog. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2025 (Dr. Axe, solo episode: cooling foods in winter, eaten warm, in a chicken vegetable soup or with ginger, at 28:56-29:30 on the DrAxe.com episode page and 26:21-27:10 on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nmGynV_jjQ&t=1581s).
10. Chandre R, Upadhyay BN, Murthy KH. Clinical evaluation of Kushmanda Ghrita in the management of depressive illness. Ayu. 2011;32(2):230-3. doi:10.4103/0974-8520.92592
11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Waxgourd, (chinese preserving melon), cooked, boiled, drained, without salt. FDC ID 170475 (SR Legacy; 1 cup cubes = 175 g). Accessed October 27, 2026.
12. Zou P. Traditional Chinese Medicine, Food Therapy, and Hypertension Control: A Narrative Review of Chinese Literature. Am J Chin Med. 2016;44(8):1579-1594. doi:10.1142/S0192415X16500889
13. Rachchh MA, Jain SM. Gastroprotective effect of Benincasa hispida fruit extract. Indian J Pharmacol. 2008;40(6):271-5. doi:10.4103/0253-7613.45154
14. Vinaya TM, Aravind BS, Sibbritt D, Tapasbrata T, Shivakumar S. The use of Benincasa hispida for the treatment of uninvestigated dyspepsia: Preliminary results of a non-randomised open label pilot clinical trial. Advances in Integrative Medicine. 2015;2(3):130-134. doi:10.1016/j.aimed.2015.09.003
15. Nakashima M, Shigekuni Y, Obi T, Shiraishi M, Miyamoto A, Yamasaki H, et al. Nitric oxide-dependent hypotensive effects of wax gourd juice. J Ethnopharmacol. 2011;138(2):404-7. doi:10.1016/j.jep.2011.09.027
16. Selvakumar G, Shathirapathiy G, Jainraj R, Yuvaraj Paul P. Immediate effect of bitter gourd, ash gourd, Knol-khol juices on blood sugar levels of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A pilot study. J Tradit Complement Med. 2017;7(4):526-531. doi:10.1016/j.jtcme.2017.01.009
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21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central: Watermelon, raw. FDC ID 167765 (SR Legacy). Accessed October 27, 2026.
22. Ahmad H, Zhao X, Ahmad N, Khan A, Jin Y, Du J, et al. Benincasa hispida extracts positively regulated high salt-induced hypertension in Dahl salt-sensitive rats: Impact on biochemical profile and metabolic patterns. J Food Biochem. 2022;46(12):e14497. doi:10.1111/jfbc.14497
23. Grover JK, Adiga G, Vats V, Rathi SS. Extracts of Benincasa hispida prevent development of experimental ulcers. J Ethnopharmacol. 2001;78(2-3):159-64. doi:10.1016/s0378-8741(01)00334-8
24. Sun X, Baldwin EA, Plotto A, Manthey JA, Duan Y, Bai J. Effects of thermal processing and pulp filtration on physical, chemical and sensory properties of winter melon juice. J Sci Food Agric. 2017;97(2):543-550. doi:10.1002/jsfa.7761
25. Athira AS, Abhijith B, Sruthi PK, Ragavamenon AC, Lankalapalli RS, Reshma MV. Lyophilized ash gourd (Benincasa hispida (Thunb.) Cogn.) juice alleviates diet-induced prediabetes in a rat model. Food Funct. 2025;16(4):1534-1549. doi:10.1039/d4fo05327c
26. Huang HY, Chang CK, Tso TK, Huang JJ, Chang WW, Tsai YC. Antioxidant activities of various fruits and vegetables produced in Taiwan. Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2004;55(5):423-9. doi:10.1080/09637480412331324695
27. Axe J, Gupta S. The Spice That Fights Inflammation Better Than Ibuprofen | Dr Shivani Gupta. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2026 (Dr. Axe speaking: warming and cooling foods and his patients with hypothyroidism at 33:30; YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_wClrC754I&t=2010s).
28. Axe J, Cole W. Heal Your Cells. Avery; 2026. ISBN 9798217181353 (personalized nutrition, the three doshas: pitta types benefit from cooling foods like cucumbers and leafy greens).
29. Axe J, Petrucci K. The Real Reason Your Gut Won't Heal (And How Bone Broth Fixes It) | Dr. Kellyann Petrucci. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2026 (Dr. Axe speaking: chicken soup and his patients' bone broth fasts at 5:02-5:24; YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mitZMXMzRx4&t=302s).
30. The Holy Bible, King James Version. Proverbs 25:16. Project Gutenberg eBook #10.
31. Shakya A, Chaudhary SK, Bhat HR, Ghosh SK. Acute and sub-chronic toxicity studies of Benincasa hispida (Thunb.) cogniaux fruit extract in rodents. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2020;118:104785. doi:10.1016/j.yrtph.2020.104785
32. Axe J. How to Heal Hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's Naturally. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. 2024 (Dr. Axe, solo episode: warming the body, soups, and his patients eating raw and cold foods at 37:46-38:25; YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpI4SSyOQ6c&t=2266s).
33. Indian Council of Medical Research Task Force. Assessment of effects on health due to consumption of bitter bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) juice. Indian J Med Res. 2012;135(1):49-55. doi:10.4103/0971-5916.93424
34. Nagakura KI, Takei M, Sato S, Yanagida N, Ebisawa M. Anaphylaxis to winter melon due to cross-reactivity of sensitization to ragweed pollen. Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2022;33(3):e13764. doi:10.1111/pai.13764
35. de Oliveira MC, Sichieri R, Venturim Mozzer R. A low-energy-dense diet adding fruit reduces weight and energy intake in women. Appetite. 2008;51(2):291-5. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2008.03.001
36. Karl JP, Roberts SB. Energy Density, Energy Intake, and Body Weight Regulation in Adults. Adv Nutr. 2014;5(6):835-850. doi:10.3945/an.114.007112

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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