New And Exciting Ways To Cook With Tea

Findings shared by the international science community reveal that tea improves cognitive and immune function, prevents cancer, and enhances cardiovascular health, according to a report on PR Newswire. When people talk about tea, the first thing that comes to mind is making a perfect cup of green tea or black tea, oolong tea, or white tea. However, tea is also a versatile cooking ingredient. With a little creativity, you can add layers of woodsy, herbal, grassy, vegetable, and sweet tea flavors to pasta, cookies, puddings, steak, and stir-fries. Read on to learn a few exciting tips for cooking with tea.

Bake Cookies with Tea

Tea with cookies tastes good, but baking cookies with tea is even better. Many tea enthusiasts know matcha as a primary baking ingredient. However, you can also use roasted oolong or black tea to bake cookies, donuts, cakes, macaroons, and other pastries. To enjoy an aromatic punch in your pastries, you need to follow the right steps for baking with tea. First, grind roasted black, green, or oolong tea into fine powder so it blends well with the flour, and holds up well with sugar and butter. To spice up your buttery donut, shortbread, or cookie, a tablespoon or two will be enough. To achieve a bittersweet, fruity, and roasted flavor, try baking with a dark tea.

Tea-Smoked Food

If you’re like many people, you’re probably trying to figure out how to tea-smoke your food. This cooking technique is popular in China. It involves mixing tea leaves and rice, then heating them in a wok lined with foil. Allow the mixture to heat until it smokes. Next, cook your beef steak, salmon, prawns, or trout in a wired rack or steamer over the smoking tea.

There are a variety of tea options you can cook with, including smoking beef, fish, and other foods. Depending on your preferences, you can use oolong, Earl Grey, black, green, or white teas. You can also use caffeinated or a mixture of caffeine-free herbal teas. If you’d like to experiment with different types of teas from different countries, consider getting a tea of the month club subscription box so you can tea-smoke your food with organic, single origin teas from India, Thailand, and Vietnam, among others.

Try Tea in Soups

Aside from steeping tea, green tea leaves are perfect for preparing classic homemade broths, stews, and soups. Note that green tea leaves pair well with onion, ginger, and garlic, adding an earthy and savory taste to your bone broth, stew, or chicken stock. When added in soups, green tea offer many health benefits, like preventing type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and speeding up weight loss. Also, the antioxidants in green tea help remedy common colds.

Thanks to its versatility, you can use tea leaves to add flavor to your favorite meals. Oolong, white, black, green, and Earl Grey teas are perfect culinary ingredients you can add to soup, pastry, pasta, pudding, and meat recipes. Your favorite teas add a punch of aroma, grassy, woodsy, sweet, and herbal taste to your foods.