Posts Tagged ‘Stovetop Samovar’
November 16, 2011 | 
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Turkish Stovetop Samovar
While you’re unlikely to have an elaborate charcoal powered samovar at home, you could easily have an inexpensive stovetop model, and even if this is out of reach you could build your own by finding a teapot that fits with some stability on top of a kettle. “To what purpose?” you may ask. Ah, so that you can brew tea the way they do in Turkey, among other places. The advantages of the samovar are flavor, you can serve a lot of tea at once fairly quickly, and the fact that you can serve tea either dark or light.
Here’s how you do it. Fill the kettle with water and bring to a boil, then place some tea into the teapot and fill with hot water from the kettle. Refill the kettle. Now take off the kettle’s lid and place the teapot on the kettle so that the teapot now acts like the lid. Place the kettle back on the stove. When ready to serve, fire up the stove to heat the water in the kettle. This will also heat the now concentrated tea in the teapot. To serve, separate the teapot and kettle, pour some tea into tea glasses, and top with hot water from the kettle. Adjusting the ratio of tea to water makes it darker or lighter to suit the preference of each individual being served. Offer sugar cubes so that everyone can sweeten their tea to taste.
While the samovar method works well with Turkish tea, Russian tea, and with Earl Grey (the Iranian preference, I believe), it may not do as well with strong black teas that tend toward bitterness and astringency; these are better served with milk or cream as in England (but never in Turkey).
Most of the light but tasty tea grown in Turkey is consumed in Turkey, but I do make it a point to always have some on hand at my tea store, as well as a stovetop samovar or two.
Roland at Tea & Treasure
Posted in Earl Grey, Tea Accessories, Turkish Tea, Uncategorized | 
Tags: Russian tea, samovar, Stovetop Samovar, tea in Turkey, Turkish tea | 
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Like everything else, modern stovetop Turkish samovars, simply called “Stainless Steel Tea Pot“, are made in China. These consist of a bottom pot that serves as a kettle and a smaller pot that fits on top and serves as the tea pot. Water is boiled in the kettle, and some of it is then poured into the tea pot which has looseleaf tea in it.
The smaller tea pot is then set onto the larger kettle. It’s a nice fit as the pots are made so that when the lid is removed from the kettle the tea pot fits onto the kettle snugly.
The kettle can sit on the stove all day if a lot of tea is going to be drunk, or the water can be brought back up to temperature when tea is desired. What happens is that some of the very strong tea from the tea pot is poured into a tea glass and topped with hot water from the kettle. This way one can drink light tea, by adding more kettle water, or strong tea, by adding more of the brew from the top pot.
Tea in Turkey is usually sweetened with sugar.
The reason it’s served in glasses, rather than ceramic cups, is so that the fiery orange color of the tea can be enjoyed along with the brew itself.
Turkish tea, tea glasses, and the stainless steel tea pots, which I call stovetop samovars, are all available now at Tea and Treasure in Coupeville, WA.
Roland Petrov