Tips For Cooking With Tea

Dried leaves can add crunch and flavor for rubs to coat fish, meat or poultry or to be
used as a garnish, particularly when young and green. Smoked teas lend a deep,
dark smokiness to poultry and seafood.

Brewed tea can be used as a braising liquid, or as a seasoning for marinades. As
the base for a sauce,fruit juices gain depth of flavor with a tea addition. A small
handful of tealeaves add an herbaceous flavor and a golden glow to cream sauces.
The sweets table becomes infinitely more interesting with a cake or shortbread
made with tea. Here, the trick is to melt the butter with tealeaves in it, allow to
stand for a few minutes and then sieve out the leaves. Chill the butter to firm and
proceed with your favorite recipe.

It is important to brew tea differently for cooking and baking than you would for brewing.
The simplest, easiest way is to pour pure spring water on the leaves and allow them to
brew at room temperature up to 20 to 30 minutes. This guarantees neither excessive
astringency nor bitterness. For a quicker brewing of tea for cooking, uses water at 185
degrees F. or slightly lower temperature and infuse the tea for three to five minutes.
Although you might be tempted to use leftover brewed tea in cooking, resist as it will be
too strong, have an off flavor or be subsequently bitter when used in cooking or baking.

Pure spring water seems to bring out both the flavor of tea better than purified or certainly
distilled waters, because it has enough natural minerals to "connect" with the flavor-producing
polyphenols and make the tea "sing" with flavor. If you're lucky to live in a town with great
municipal tap water, brew your teas with that.

Try brewed tea in place of water or stock when cooking rice or other grains for a delicate tea flavor.

Don't brew "strong" tea for extra time, as this will make the tea bitter. Instead, use twice
the quantity of tea as usual, and brew for the maximum amount of time appropriate for the
type of tea, generally 5 minutes for black teas, 7 minutes for oolongs, and 3 minutes for greens.

In general, substitute one half or more of the liquid (water or stock) called for in a recipe with
tea. You may need to adjust some seasonings, especially salt.

If you prepare homemade cranberry sauce, use tea in place of the water. Choose a "holiday"
tea made with cranberries, oranges, and/or spices. Brew the tea to regular strength.

Prepared tea that's left over in the pot can be poured into an airtight container and stored for
two or three days in the refrigerator. You can mix different teas together in the same container.
Use the tea "blend" for cooking or baking. Or, if it sits around too long, for watering your plants
(they'll thank you)!

Remember that "tea" made with herbs, fruits, and flowers only is not really tea but infusion or
tisane. These recipes use real tea unless otherwise noted. And unless otherwise noted all
recipes call for standard eight-ounce liquid cup measures, not the contents of a teacup,
which normally holds only six ounces.

You have all the equipment already for brewing teas for cooking, and perhaps no tool is as
important as a fine-meshed sieve or a chinois, a sophisticated French sieve. When sieving
out the liquid from tea, these tools make it easier to press down on the leaves themselves
and squeeze out as much flavorful tea as possible for your dish. An alternative for the sieve
is the French press-style tea infuser. This makes infusing easy, and cleanup effortless.
The result is pure, lovely, flavorful tea every time.

We also recoommend the use of a countertop timer or at least use the timer on your oven
to help you infuse the tea for just the right amount of time. This is particularly important if
you use heated water vs. the 20-30 minute room temperature method.

And, what to do with all the tea leaves? Recycle. After all, spent tea leaves, green matter
like any other, are highly biodegradable. Use a ceramic or plastic tub for the spent tea
leaves, then toss them onto your compost; sprinkle them around indoor or outdoor plants
for extra fertilization, or dry them and scatter on Fido's or Kitty's bed to ward off fleas.

-Cooking with Tea by Robert Wemischner and Diana Rosen.


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