Not many people would think that tea can be used in the kitchen other than for preparing the traditional drink. However, tea leaves can serve as additives for food – both sweet and savoury.

Teas are a source of many substances beneficial to the health of the human organism. In order to obtain them you do not have to drink hectolitres of tea – it is enough if we use tea leaves as a food additive.

Green Tea for Cooking

The best type for cooking is green tea – white teas are too fine and their flavour easily disappears in heavy and flavourful foods. On the contrary, black teas are too strong. In addition, green teas are healthier than black ones, because they are exposed to shorter oxidation, so they retain substantially more vitamins and other substances.

Ground Dried Leaves

We can use green tea for cooking in two basic ways. The first option is to add ground dried tea leaves to food. We only use loose green tea and grind it finely using a coffee grinder or mixer. We primarily add this fine tea powder to pastries – to confectionery, cakes and pies. However, it also gives savoury baked goods an interesting flavour.

Obviously, all such foods obtain a greenish tinge, so we can use green tea to make food more aesthetically pleasing – we can, for example, serve a two-colour sponge cake or green bread dumplings (although there is the issue of whether too much green is a bad thing for some types of food). When we add ground tea to baked goods, we never heat the oven to more than 180°C, as this could burn the leaves and instead of green we would have a brownish or black colour.

Whole Dried Leaves

The second option is adding whole tea leaves to food. In this case, however, we first steam them, so that they do not break during preparation. We add the leaves to salads and side dishes. In the case of rice and pasta we can pour the leaves into the pot and cook the side dish in green tea, instead of in water – not only does this give food more vitamins, but it also obtains a fine and fresh flavour.

Whichever way we experiment with tea in the kitchen, we can be sure that it will only benefit our body.