Just a few days after the start of the new year, NPR broadcasted a Weekend Edition story titled “Eating Tea and Other Food Predictions for 2014”. As the title suggests, tea infused foods are on trend for 2014.
Cooking with tea is nothing new to me but this article did inspire me to write down some of the tricks of cooking with tea that I have picked up over the years. Let me start by talking about why even cook with tea?
The first time I cooked with tea was in college. I was a 20 year old in the big city of Chicago living in a tiny apartment with an equally tiny kitchen. It was a Saturday morning and I wanted bread pudding. I looked up the recipes online and had all the basics of milk, eggs, and bread but was without vanilla or cinnamon. And then that moment of inspiration hit me. I have masala chai tea and chai has spices! So I simply created a strong brew of tea and chai bread pudding came into my life.
Now, although the end product was quite exotic, I hope you see that my entry into cooking with tea was not glamorous but more so obvious. The chai bread pudding I had made tasted good and had that perfect gourmet quirky touch. Over the years I continued to add tea to random dishes here and there, mostly to impress my friends. Inspired by NPR’s Eating Tea article I decided to create this simple infographic focusing on how to incorporate tea into your cuisine. There are four basic methods of Infuse, mix, and rub tea on food. including tea in sweet dishes will typically work out in your favor but working in tea into a savory dish will require a bit more imagination than the first use.
In the coming weeks I will be posting recipes of tea infused dishes that I have made in the past, Including a darjeeling-tandoori chicken spice rub, perfect for barbecuing.
In the mean time please please a comment below or email eli@elitea.co with recipie sugestions or your own culinary tea stories.
- eli
p.s. I will also address the concern of raised caffeine and fluoride exposure in a future post.
