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10 things you didn’t know about tea
Recently, the luxury teapot brand Bredemeijer organized a bloggers event for a few well-known food bloggers at Eat Your Heart Out in Amsterdam. An event that was all about tea & food. During this afternoon, tea specialist and food stylist Mariëlle Erkens told all the ins and outs about tea. Because how do you actually prepare the perfect cup of tea? And how do you match tea with delicious appetizers? TALK ABOUT was there and we would like to share some useful tips about tea.
‘Teariffic’ tasty tea facts
- For tea, it is best to use purified water such as Spa water. The benefit in this is that the tea tastes better and leaves less stains.
- For a good cup of tea, you should use ‘fresh’ water. So I’m not talking about water that has been in the water kettle for 24 hours. This water contains less oxygen, which makes tea less tasty.
- Do you prefer fresh leaf tea or are you more of a tea bag lover? Do not store them in a tea box or only in a bag: the delicious tea aromas fade away. It is best to keep tea in closed cans or a container.
- Just leave the filter or the tea bag in the water for a few minutes and do not ‘dip it’. This will release spicy flavors.
- It is advised to use a tea strainer instead of a tea infuser. Tea has little space in a tea infuser, which makes it hard for the tea to move around.
- Did you know that you should never use boiling water for green tea? The best thing to do is to let the water cool down to 75 or 85 degrees (depending on the type of tea). This way, the green tea won’t become spicy.
- In general, the higher the water temperature, the more spicy the tea becomes.
- White tea is perfect for ‘cleaning’ your mouth. Forgot your toothbrush? Take a nice cup of white tea for a fresh sensation.
- You can simply consider tea as part of your daily hydration.
- By using a beautiful double-walled teapot like Bredemeijer’s Bella Ronde, the tea stays hot and tasty from 45 minutes to an hour. Prefer a nice eye-catcher on the table? Then choose the Cosy Manto. Thanks to the stainless steel casing and a tea filter which covers the ceramic teapot, the tea stays warm and tasty for an extra long time. Perfect when spending the night on the couch with a blanket to cover yourself.
Tea-matching and tasting
Tea can enhance, balance or change the taste of food, just like wine. Tea specialist Mariëlla Erkens has a couple of delicious ‘tea with food’ combinations where you can experience this:
- Green tea, such as Jangwon tea from Korea, tastes very good with a Dutch dish called ‘andijviestamppot’ (mashed potatoes with endives) combined with lemon, lemon rasp, roasted almonds and basil. The flavors compliment each other very well.
- White tea such as Pu Erh from China, which has a subtle taste, is delicious to combine with a cracker with mushroom spread and small tomatoes. The tea gives the mushroom spread much more flavor.
- Dark tea such as Mokalbari from North-East India goes very well with chocolate. The tea itself is bitter, but in combination with dark chocolate, for example, the bitter taste disappears and it even becomes a little bit sweet. Did you already know all these facts and do you sometimes combine snacks with tea?