Cooking with tea : the possibilities

You can also eat tea, using it in everything from stir-fry to muffins. This is really not such a far-out idea, since people were eating tea a couple of thousand years ago. It’s relatively simple to substitute concentrated tea for liquids in many baking recipes. Sweet breads and muffins seem particularly suited to this substitution.

Diana Rosen, coauthor of Cooking with Tea , suggests that if you slowly brew tea at room temperature for about twenty to thirty minutes, the resulting infusion will be free of bitterness and astringency and will be even better than quickly brewed tea in various recipes. Of course, you wouldn’t want to drink tea brewed like this, as it would be much too strong. She also suggests using spring water instead of distilled water for a superior product.

Brewed tea can also be used in marinades and basting sauces, or as flavoring for stir-fry. Just be sure to choose a flavor of tea that will enhance your meat or poultry.

Next time you are boiling eggs and want to add something a little unusual, boil the eggs in dark tea, and during the last few minutes of cooking, remove the eggs, crack the shells, and return them to the liquid to continue to cook. This results in a beautiful “marbled” look.

Yellow chai tea

A 'proper tea' is much nicer than a 'very nearly tea,' which is one you forget about afterwards.

-A.A. Milne, Writer

 Yellow chai tea is grown and produced only in China, and not much of it is exported, making it the rarest of the major tea types covered in this book. It is processed in a way that is similar to green teas, but before the leaves are dried, they are allowed to turn yellow. Yellow chai tea is milder and sweeter than green tea chai .

Yellow chai tea should be brewed in much the same fashion as white teas. Boiling water will ruin the delicate taste of the yellow leaves, so be certain that you are using water that has boiled and cooled to about 170 degrees F. Steeping time should be between 1 and 3 minutes, with longer steeping allowed each time you reuse the Yellow chai tea leaves. As far as how much tea you should use per cup, it is really a matter of personal taste, use the information on the package as your starting point and experiment to find out what you like the best.

Typical Preparation

Temperature: 170-180°F (77°C-82°C)
Time: 1-3 Minutes
Milk/Cream: Never
Honey/Sugar: Never
Lemon: Never

Mount Meng Yellow Sprout (Meng Ding Huang Ya)

Mount Meng Yellow Sprout is a delicate, grassy-flavored tea with a nutty aftertaste. It is named after Mount Meng, where it's harvested, and it's considered an Imperial tea, which means that it has a large, loosely rolled leaf.

Mount Jun Silver Needle (Junshan Yinzhen)

Also named after the mountain from which it was harvested, Mount Jun Silver Needle has a very delicate taste and because of its silver appearance, it is sometimes sold as white tea.

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Tea History: Yellow chai tea is also the name for the teas that were served during the rule of China's Imperial Court. The Imperial Court can refer to any period of dominant rule between the Qin Dynasty (221 - 206 BCE) and Yuan Shikai's rule in 1916.Given the high-standard of royal ritual in place during that time, delicate and bright Yellow chai tea were a perfect fit.

also read about :

•   Yellow Chai tea health FACTS

• White chai Tea

White chai Tea

A woman is like a tea bag – you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

-Eleanor Roosevelt, Former First Lady

White tea leaves are plucked much more discriminately than other tea leaves. To begin with, they are only plucked on a few days of the year in the beginning of spring.

Only the top leaves and immature buds are picked, and of that harvest, only perfect specimens make it to the basket – no leaves that are damaged in any way will be sold. After harvesting, leaves are barely processed; it takes an experienced eye and a watchful laborer to steam, and then dry the leaves just enough to allow them to be transported. For all of these reasons, the price of white teas is, on average, much higher than other teas.

White tea leaves are processed the least of any variety of tea, without any rolling or oxidation. Although the leaves and buds are silvery white in color, the tea is a light yellow when it is brewed. White teas have higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of caffeine than any other type of tea. The silver effect is caused by minute stirrings of new growth in the form of delicate, white hairs on the outside of the tea leaves and buds.

When brewing white tea, be careful not to pour boiling water on the leaves, which are too fragile to handle that kind of heat. Boiling water on white tea leaves will result in a bitter tea. White teas are very subtle in flavor and it is not uncommon for people who are used to stronger teas to think the flavor of white tea is too faint.

Typical Preparation

Temperature: 170-180°F (77°C-82°C)
Time: 3-5 Minutes
Milk/Cream: Never
Honey/Sugar: Never
Lemon: Never

Silver Needle (Bai Hao Yin Zhen)

Silver Needle tea comes from the Fujian Province in China and is regarded as the best of all white teas. It is comprised of only buds and has a very subtle, mildly sweet flavor.

White Peony (Bai Mu Dan)

White Peony tea is considered the second finest white tea from China. This one is made up of buds and leaves, but the leaves are covered in the fine, white hairs that envelope the buds. The flavor is a bit more robust than Silver Needle tea.

Long Life Eyebrow (Shou Mei)

After Silver Needle and White Peony teas are harvested, the remaining white leaves are gathered for Long Life Eyebrow tea. The flavor of Long Life Eyebrow is stronger than White Peony, but still delicate compared to other tea varieties, like black tea.

Tribute Eyebrow (Gong Mei)

The lowest-grade white tea, Tribute Eyebrow is made from a slightly different tea bush than the other three. It is comprised of mostly broken leaves with few, if any buds. The flavor is the most robust of all four of these white teas.