Cooking with Tea
March 30, 2010 | 
Author ‘There are numerous ways to use tea in cooking. The most obvious is to brew tea and add it to the recipe as all or part of the liquid component. Or you could just throw a tea bag into the liquid that the recipe calls for, like water or broth, and retrieve it when the desired result has been achieved.
Another method is to give tea leaves a whirl in a spice grinder and use the resulting powder as you would a spice. This method is particularly useful for baked goods.
At the store I stock tea spice rubs. These are powdered tea with spices added. They are good for rubbing onto meat or fish, sprinkling on vegetables, or adding to sour cream for a dip. Using the spice grinder, you could pulverize your own tea and add any spices you fancy for your own unique tea spice rubs.
Two other methods of cooking with tea are well known in the restaurant business: smoking food with tea and packing food in tea leaves prior to baking. This is usually done to a protein like meat or fish.
There are advantages to cooking with tea. Firstly, it’s a way to infuse food with interesting flavors, and secondly it’s a way to enrich food with antioxidants.
Watch for recipes which include tea in future blogs, as well as food and tea pairings.
Roland Petrov
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I came upon a recipe the other day that I couldn’t resist: Smoky Tea Prawns.
It calls for sauteing a minced garlic clove and a tablespoon of grated orange zest in a tablespoon of butter and then adding a cup of brewed Lapsang Souchong tea, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of honey, and a tablespoon of soy sauce.
When this comes to a simmer, the recipe wants you to add 20 large peeled and deveined prawns and cook until done. I tried the recipe yesterday, but when I tasted the sauce before adding the prawns, I thought that it didn’t pack enough punch, so I reduced the sauce by half.
I didn’t go further than that as I thought that it would become too bitter; however, I do think that an adaptation of this recipe to create a smoky glaze could be really good. I’m thinking of making the tea stronger and adding less of it and increasing the amount of honey.
What do you think, chefs?
And do you have any special tea recipes you’d like to share?
Roland Petrov