6 Times You Should Be Cooking With Tea

No matter what kind of cook you are, if you spend any amount of time in the kitchen, the odds are good that you’d like your time there to yield tasty meals prepared in a healthy and efficient manner.

From cooking meals for yourself and your family when you’re crunched for time during the week to hosting dinner parties with five courses over a holiday weekend, “cooking” can look completely different and involve completely different tools and tricks depending on who is doing it and what the goals of the particular meal are.

That being said, some kitchen tips and tricks are useful in almost any situation — like cooking with tea. If you’ve never cooked with tea before, you’re about to embark on an entirely new flavor experience. Here are six times in the life and work of a home cook that tea should be considered an essential accompaniment to the recipe.

1. Rice

Rice is a staple around the world, and if you’re like most families, it makes it into a meal at least once a week. Well, the next time you’re cooking some rice, throw a teabag or two into the water. Mint added to rice makes it an even better accompaniment for Indian dishes. If your rice is going to pair with Mexican or Spanish food, add a tea with lemon or other bright citrus notes in it. Again, being creative is part of the fun, and the more you practice adding different teas to rice, the better you’ll get at knowing what works well and what doesn’t.

2. Cookies

Regardless of what type of cookies you’re making, adding some dry tea leaves to the batch will enhance the flavor considerably. Try adding a tablespoon of Earl Grey tea leaves to your next batch of chocolate chip cookies. Add some chamomile or ginger tea to oatmeal raisin. Get creative, and make use of whatever you have on hand. While it’s unlikely you’ll need to convince anyone in your household to eat the cookies you make, creating a more complex taste experience can make consuming them even more of a treat for you and your family.

3. Fudge

Not everyone is a fan of fudge, but for those who are, finding a unique recipe that deepens fudge’s already decadent flavor is something of a holy grail. Using chaga tea is a great way to improve your fudge, as this smooth, rich flavored mushroom tea can’t help but enhance almost any chocolate recipe it’s added to.

Simply replace a couple tablespoons of the evaporated milk your recipes calls for with chaga tea — not all of it, mind you — and follow the rest of your recipe’s instructions like you always do. The result is a rich and earthy flavor wonderfully complemented by the unrelenting sweetness that is the calling card of any good batch of fudge.

4. Brine

If you haven’t yet delved too far into the world of brine, it’s time to do so with a tea bag in hand. Black tea makes a great brine for poultry and other lean cuts of meat, because it helps add flavor to what can otherwise be a drier meat.

In particular, brew a batch of sweet tea with lemon and set a whole chicken to soak in it for a few hours before roasting it or frying it. The sugar combined with the tea and lemon’s astringent properties helps to tenderize the muscle, injecting flavor-filled moisture throughout the whole bird.

5. Dry Rubs

The next time you make a dry rub for steak, fish or pork, add some dry tea leaves to it. Besides adding yet another layer of flavor to whatever it is you normally work with, tea’s wonderfully aromatic qualities will also enhance your experience of cooking, smelling and eating your meat, and if you make any gravy or sauces from the drippings, they will get an added flavor boost as well.

6. Smoked Meats

Whether you’re an old hat at smoking meats or it’s something you’ve been dying to try, adding tea leaves to your smoking arsenal is a great idea. You can substitute tea leaves for wood chips directly, or you can add them to whatever wood you’re used to using. If you don’t have a smoker, you can place your meat in a steamer basket and set it over a wok like in this great Food Network recipe for tea-smoked chicken.

Cooking with tea is just like cooking with any other new-to-you ingredient: So long as you’re willing to experiment and have fun, the options are almost endless.