Advice, recipes: How to use tea in cooking?

Tea in the kitchen

Depending on taste, all teas can be used in cooking. Moreover, it seems that tea was for a long time one of the ingredients making up soup in China during Antiquity, long before becoming a drink.

Here are some ideas for putting tea on the menu:

– Baste poultry halfway through cooking with a Darjeeling tea.
– Deglaze pan-fried meat with a Assam black tea.
– Infuse cream or milk with tea to make ice cream, panna cotta, flan, etc.
– Poach eggs or fish with Pu Erh tea.
– Perfume the cooking water for rice or potatoes with a Oolong tea.
– Spice up a soup by adding leaves of toasted tea at the end of cooking, then mixing them.
– Drag a tip of green tea in a fish or seafood papillote.
– Twist a marinade with a Chai or one smoked tea.
– Enhance a crumble with a citrus flavored tea.
– Stud meat with a smoked tea.

Tea, an ecological drink?

Capturing CO2 to grow and extremely light when dried, the tea is easy to transport. Its carbon footprint is therefore negative even when it is imported from the other side of the world. The problem is the amount of energy consumed to heat the water…

François-Xavier Delmas’ tips?

“Heat the exact amount of water needed, not a whole kettle. You can also reduce the temperature, or even steep tea in cold or lukewarm water for thirty minutes to an hour. This allows you to have excellent tea without consuming too much energy. »

Choosing and enjoying your tea wisely

– It is always preferable to buy loose tea from a specialist and to avoid tea bags (except perhaps for certain recipes) because they are generally tea powder with much less subtle flavors.
– To guarantee strong aromas, store the tea in airtight and opaque boxes, and consume it quickly.
– As for the agreements, they are almost infinite! We can play tone on tone, contrast or fusion… Don’t hesitate to ask the specialists and do some experiments.

To read

“Tea sommelier”

To know everything about tea, its history, its origins, its accords, its traditions, its preparation, its varieties, you must delve into this fascinating work by François-Xavier Delmas and Mathias Minet, nicely illustrated by Lauriane Tiberghien… As a bonus , many recipes and loads of information!
Editions E/P/A, €24.90