5 Simple Ways to Begin Cooking with Tea

Drinking tea is definitely the most popular way to enjoy the beverage, but it’s not the only way. Cooking with tea is a great way to get more from your cup as it brings unique flavours to savoury and sweet dishes. Tea can enhance a recipe and also help balance flavours. You can infuse a recipe with tea by adding steeped tea or even just the tea leaves directly to the mix. Cooking with tea doesn’t have to be complicated and doesn’t have to be just blending up tea in a smoothie recipe either. These 5 recommendations are a great way to start using your favourite tea as an ingredient in recipes. They may be simple but one small adjustment can pack more flavour than ever!

Why Should You Bake or Cook With Tea?

Baking or cooking with tea allows you to add a new dimension to your sweet or savoury recipes. This is done easily too because it’s just one extra powerful ingredient that is needed to amplify your food and give you something new to try. Depending on how you use tea in a recipe, it can also help lock in moisture so you won’t have to deal with dry bites of food.

With so many different teas out there in the world, you have an abundance of flavours to work with. Cooking with tea allows you to add floral, earthy, smokey, spicy, sweet, creamy or even herbal notes to main dishes or desserts.

How to Cook with Tea

It is time to think outside the cup!

1. Replace other liquids like water or broth with steeped tea.

When a recipe calls for liquids like water, broth or even milk, reach for your tea cupboard! Cook your oatmeal, grains, soup, etc. in a flavourful pot of tea instead of water or broth. Poach fruit, fish, eggs, etc. in a pot of tea. Simply replace the amount of liquid that is required with steeped tea. If the recipe is calling for milk, try cold steeping tea in milk before adding it in.

2. Infuse butter and oil with tea.

Some sort of fat like butter and oil is often found in recipes whether it’s for a meal or a baked good. Making tea infused butter or tea infused oil is an easy way to add tea to your recipe without too much effort.

To make your own tea infused butter/oil: melt butter or heat oil in a pot, add tea leaves and let it steep for 5 minutes on low heat. Remove from heat and let the mixture cool for a few minutes. Then, strain the tea leaves and allow the butter/oil return to room temperature before using it in a recipe.

3. Flavour dishes with tea salt.

This tea infused seasoning is easy to just sprinkle into dishes and can be made with a variety of teas. Add tea salt to anything you would normally add regular salt to and you’ll be greeted with unique flavours. Sprinkle on eggs, stir in salad dressing, toss on beans, fries, popcorn, etc. To get started, learn how to make green tea salt 2 different ways here.

4. Rub/marinade ingredients with tea.

Grind up tea leaves and add them to some herbs and spices to create a tea infused rub for veggies, meats, poultry, fish, tofu and tempeh. Alternatively, you can use steeped tea as a brine to marinate those items for a few hours to lock in moisture and create new flavours for the grill.

5. Eat the leaves!

In many cases, you can actually eat spent tea leaves. But, not what you would find in a commercial tea bag. I’m talking about whole leaves here! Eating some tea leaves is similar to cooked vegetables. After steeping the leaves, top a salad with them, add them to rice, or mix them in a soup! I recommend trying this with organic, high quality green teas like Gyokuro, Sencha, Sejak and Wooje o n.

An easier way to do this is by using teas that are finely ground into powder form (ie. matcha or hojicha powder). These are true tea powders and not instant tea. You are ingesting the entire leaves when consuming. The powder makes it simple to quickly mix into a recipe and you don’t have to worry about it tasting too much like a healthy leafy green.