Share
Ask a chai lover and they will tell you different ways to make chai using all kinds of tea leaves and mixtures. But if you speak to a seasoned chef, pastry chef, or home chef/ baker, they will recommend many different ways to use tea at home. The ingredient has more uses in cooking than the most obvious one.
Video Credit: Anisha Recipe/ YouTube
From baked goods to smoked flavours, infusing your recipes with the flavours and aroma of tea can help you create unique dishes that would surprise your family, friends, and guests. Here is a quick guide for you to experiment with the bold palate that tea leaves have to offer.
Use Tea To Smoke Dishes
Tea leaves can be excellent for infusing smoky flavour into the dishes. You can create an aromatic mix of tea leaves, rice, and sugar. Add this to a smoker or even a wok to infuse the fish, chicken, vegetables, and tofu with unique flavours. Keep the smoked dishes covered until you are ready to serve. It will enhance the dining experience.
Bake With Tea
Pastry chefs and pioneer home chefs will tell you that baking with tea can open several doors for experimenting with recipes. You can infuse the bold flavours of tea with cream, milk, and butter to be used in baking sugary delights. Many bakers add matcha tea powder for a green hue. You can also add chai mixture to sugar syrups and sweet drinks.
Pickle Vegetable With Tea
Do you pickle vegetables? For example, many people like pickled cucumbers and onions. While creating the brine, you can add an extra touch of oomph by adding your favourite tea mixture to the solution. Usually, oolong or black tea combinations work wonders and add a rich aroma to the pickled vegetables and fruits.
Add Tea To Dressings
The key to making a good batch of salad is a dressing boasting umami notes. You can use brewed tea to create a base for salad dressings and vinaigrette solutions. You can use the same solution for a flavourful base for sauces. Earl grey tea, herbal tea, and fresh tea leaves are perfect picks for this.
Add Tea To Cooking Liquids
Not just brines, marinades and poaching liquids can benefit from the bold notes of various kinds of tea. A compound called tannins in tea is associated with tenderising meat while infusing it with subtle flavours. Green tea is best for seafood and poultry while black tea is for other kinds of meat that take more time to cook. Add floral or spiced-flavoured tea to the poaching liquid to enhance the notes of your dish.
Mix Tea With Cocktail
Cocktails and mocktails are among different categories of liquid that you can experiment with by adding brewed tea to the shaker. If you like refreshing and light drinks, green or spiced tea can be your go-to pick, but if you want the beverage to hit you hard, always choose black tea. It pairs well with whisky and scotch.
Infuse Grain With Tea
From the recipe of biryani to quinoa salad, tea can help you create an aromatic dish that everyone would like to dig in. While cooking grains, add a tea mixture of your choice to the water, but ensure it is either herbal or green tea so that the notes do not overpower the scent and taste of other ingredients. Jasmine tea, lemon tea, ginger tea, chamomile tea, or rose tea are good choices for this experiment.
