7 Healthy Ways to Flavor Your Food with Tea

There are many ways to make our food unique and delicious. Lately, people have started to show interest in flavoring food with tea. If you are reading this post because you want to cook like a pro, then you have come to the right place. Here are some healthy ways to flavor your food with tea:

1. Replace Water With Brewed Tea

When preparing rice, pasta, oatmeal, risotto, or any food that is traditionally cooked using water, you might want to replace water with tea. Pick a tea with a flavor profile that is ideal for the dish you are making and brew it before using it to serve the purpose of water. If you are looking to get the flavor that water could not bring in, then you might want to use mint, chai, peach, or cranberry.

2. Make a Tea Spice Rub

To make a tea spice rub, you need to use ground tea leaves such as Earl Grey, rooibos, oolong, and mint. These ones are known to work perfectly in spice rubs for vegetables, fish, and meat. You might try to combine a spoon of rooibos, half a spoon of ground mustard seed, salt and pepper, half teaspoon of coriander, and half teaspoon of sweet or smoked paprika. This mixture can be safely used as a rub on mushrooms, chicken, meat, or on root vegetable before cooking.

3. Use Tea To Bake Cookies

Tea is an excellent complement for cookies and other crunchy snacks. Rather than traditional sweeteners such as vanilla, try something unique such as loose leaf tea leaves or matcha powder to flavor your cookie. Make sure that they are ground into a powder before using. It is okay to grind them using electric coffee or spice grinder, or mortar and pestle. Just open your tea bags, and you will get the content to use to bake cookies. Also, be careful not to use too much tea as that might ruin the flavor.

4. Use It To Make Tea Butter

This is a G-rated type of herb butter. To do this, you need to let your unsalted butter stay in a room temperature for some time so that it is very soft and pliable. After that, add tea leaves to butter (whole or ground). Note that ground tea will completely change the color of the butter. You can give the butter your desired shape and wrap them using a plastic wrap. Keep them in the fridge so that they firm back up.

5. Use Tea To Enhance Your Smoothie

Pick your favorite type of tea and brew it thoroughly then let it cool in ice cube trays. After that, put them in freezer-safe bags. Each time you are making a smoothie, you need to use the flavored tea ice cubes to enhance the flavor instead of water. A single cup of tea is ideal for three cups of smoothies. You can try varieties such as lavender, strawberry, mint, and green tea.

6. Use Tea To Smoke Your Foods

If you need that smoky flavor, you can burn tea leaves to smoke dishes such as poultry, fish, meats, and veggies. For this process, it is okay to use any type of tea you want. However, green tea, jasmine, and chai are always the best options. It is a simple process that doesn’t require any special skills. To get the best taste, it is important not to use too much tea. Note that your food will keep cooking for a few minutes even after you have removed it from the heat.

7. Use Tea To Infuse Dairy

It is very easy to infuse cream or milk. All you have to do is to add a savory, or sweet agent to your cream or milk, then heat it gently, but keep it below the boiling point. Take out the solids after you’ve let it cool down.

Final Thoughts

Buy Sri Lankan Tea for some of the best experiences adding flavor to your everyday foods. While the methods mentioned above work, it is important that you add the correct amount of tea so that you don’t spoil the taste of your food. Also, in some cases, you will not be able to use different teas at the same time.