What is matcha?

Matcha is a powdered Japanese green tea with a unique flavour and intensely green colour. It’s a shaded tea that was, until recently, mostly used during the Japanese tea ceremony. Matcha is now super popular, and for a good reason. Not only does it taste like no other green tea, but it may also provide many health benefits. Plus, it’s great for cooking and making lattes.

What is Beetroot Acai Matcha?

This powdered tea blend is not green. In fact, the colour is not even purple. It’s greyish-purple, and that’s because it’s blended with both beetroot powder and matcha tea. The real magic happens once you prepare it.

Beetroot Acai Matcha powder contains beetroot powder, Japanese matcha powder, flavouring granules, and acai berry powder. Both acai berries and beetroot are purple, and purple will change the green colour of matcha. Matcha makes 1/3 of this blend, so one serving will be much lower in caffeine than one serving of regular matcha tea. This powder smells delicious – sweet and earthy with deep beetroot and berry notes. Read more:

• Steeping tea with 5 different vegetables

How to make Beetroot Acai Matcha tea?

While preparing the authentic pure matcha requires some skills and utensils, making a cup of flavoured matcha is usually easier. That’s because you won’t need to froth it and, in fact, it may not foam like pure matcha would. Use can use a teaspoon and create a thick paste using a bit of hot water first, or you can add more water and use an electric hand frother. It may not always be possible to sift flavoured matcha teas because many will contain flavour granules too.

To make any tea powdered blend that contains matcha, use cooler water. Water temperature should be around 80°C or 176°F. Beetroot Acai Matcha is great with ice or with milk. Use 1-2 grams of tea powder per 100-150 ml of water and serve it over ice or add 50ml of steamed milk. You could also use milk only or even use more powder and more water because it has less caffeine than pure matcha. Prepared with hot water, this tea earthy and rich, with a creamy mouthfeel, deep beetroot and light berry notes. It’s only lightly sweet and has a very light astringency. It’s great for making an iced tea and it would be great for making iced treats. If you like beetroot juice and fruity flavours you will really enjoy this tea.

The post Beetroot Acai Matcha by Twist Teas appeared first on All That Tea.

Why did we try steeping vegetables with tea?

While at first it may not seem appealing to have a cup of vegetable flavoured tea, let’s look at it from another perspective. Many types of tea, especially green tea, will have a naturally fresh vegetal flavour. Japanese sencha may have light spinach notes, gyokuro is famous for its seaweed umami flavour and Chinese Mao Jian is vegetal and grassy. All these flavours have a potential to pair well with vegetables. Plus, earthy beetroots and sweet carrots may go well with fruit and black teas.

However, the flavour of many pure green teas can easily get lost in a heavily flavoured blend. Although gunpowder tea and some types of senchas aare great for blending and flavouring, many of them aren’t. The tea we chose is rarely used in flavoured blends – Chinese Dragon Well or Long Jing tea. Long Jing has unique flat leaves and is lighter than other green teas. It’s nutty, sweet and vegetal, and many stronger ingredients would ruin its delicate flavour. And that’s exactly why it seemed like a good idea to steep it together with some fresh vegetables.

How to steep vegetables with green tea

1. When making a cup of green tea with vegetables, choose vegetables that are edible raw, such as:

• • • Baby spinach
    • Kale
    • Celeriac root
    • Celery
    • Carrots
    • Beetroot
    • Cucumbers
    • Peppers
    • Sugar pea

Avoid vegetables that shouldn’t be eaten raw, such as potatoes or beans, or those that may give a VERY strong flavour – such as onions and garlic (although, garlic tea exists too, and potatoes make a great milk alternative!)

2. Wash it thoroughly, thinly slice it and steep together with 1 teaspoon of tea leaves.
3. Don’t use boiling water for brewing green tea and don’t over-steep it. Water temperature should be around 70-80 degrees Celsius (158-176°F), depending on the tea type.
4. Steep it for 2-3 minutes and strain. You can re-steep the same leaves once or twice.

5 different vegetables with green tea test

To give you a good idea how it tastes, we tried steeping pure green tea with a carrot, beetroot, celeriac root, chilli pepper and cucumber. Here’s how it tastes.

1. Carrot green tea

Carrots are popular for their sweetness and distinctive flavour that can pair well  with many other ingredients, and with green tea too. A real proof carrots are great in desserts is the classic carrot cake.  Steeped with green tea leaves, they add a light orange tone and a light top and bottom carrot note, with leaving the green tea flavour intact. Should you try it? Yes, if you like the flavour of carrots, try it iced and with optional ingredients such as mango or pineapple.

2. Chilli pepper green tea

 

Chilli is actually a popular ingredient in tea blends, especially rooibos and chai blends. It adds a very strong and vegetal scent to tea and doesn’t influence the colour. Chilli peppers give a hot, but surprisingly very drinkable tea. It’s strong, spicy, but the flavour of green tea is still there. Not convinced you should try it? Think of it as a stronger substitute for ginger and a good ingredient for making a comforting and warming green tea on cool winter mornings.

3. Celeriac green tea

 

Celeriac root has a very similar flavour to celery, with an additional earthy note. It’s often used for making creamy soups or to add flavour to vegetable and chicken clear soups. So, can you steep it with green tea too? In fact, you can. It gives a very delicate touch without ruining the green tea flavour. It doesn’t change the colour either. Is it worth trying? Yes, especially for making an iced tea, steeped together with herbs and fruits such as rosemary and raspberries.

4. Beetroot green tea

 

Beetroot is one of the most versatile root vegetable in the world. It tastes great sweet, sour and salty, and has a beautiful intense colour that will instantly change the colour of green tea. Nutty and toasty notes of green tea pair really well with earthy beetroot, but the flavour is distinctive. Meaning, if you like beetroots, you will enjoy it because it will alter the flavour more than many other vegetables. The best way to drink it? It would make for an amazing proper sweet, iced tea – just use a stronger green tea such as gunpowder.

5. Cucumber green tea

 

Is cucumber tea tasty? Cucumbers are a must try for steeping with green tea! They add a super flavour note to green tea, unlike any other vegetable. They can make green tea taste sweeter and cooler, and just perfect for daily summer sipping. You don’t need to worry about adding too much either – cucumbers are light enough not to ruin the tea. You can try it iced and with a slice of lemon too.

Is it worth trying to steep tea with vegetables?

Definitely! You can experiment with your favourite vegetables or create even more intrinsic flavours by adding more ingredients. Steep them together with green tea that has a vegetal and fresh flavour. Keep the steeping time up to 3 minutes and drink hot or iced.

Need more ideas on how to flavour tea?

• Read which fresh fruits are great for steeping with black tea

The post Is cucumber tea tasty? 5 different vegetables steeped with tea appeared first on All That Tea.