Drink Green Tea

Green tea is more than just a hot, green liquid. Each cup of green tea is packed with antioxidants, and can prevent heart problems, improve brain function, and lessen your chances of developing certain cancers.[1][2] But it's important to serve green tea properly to reap all the benefits from this healthy, green liquid.

Steps

Drinking Green Tea

  1. Hold your cup with your right hand while supporting it from below with your left hand. The cup or "yunomi" as it is called in Japanese, should be supported with both hands. Using both hands is considered to be polite etiquette in Japan.[3]
  2. Drink the tea without slurping or making any noise. Avoid blowing on the tea to cool it down. Instead, set it down on the table to let it cool.[3]
  3. Enjoy the tea, based on your preference and tastebuds. Ultimately the tea should taste appealing and delicious to you, whether you prefer it a bit bitter or more muted in taste or sweeter or milder in flavor. It's important to drink a cup of tea that suits your palate.[4]

Having Green Tea with a Meal

  1. Pair green tea with mildly-flavored snacks that will not compete with the flavor of the tea. Your light meal could include plain butter cookies, plain pound cake, or small rice crackers.[5]
  2. Go for a sweet side snack with your tea over salty. Green tea goes well with sweet foods, as the tea is more bitter than the food, and will moderate the sweet taste of the food.[6]
  3. Try serving tea with mochi. Mochi is a Japanese glutinous rice cake that is usually circular in shape and dyed different colors.[7]
    • Mochi is available in savory and sweet flavors. The sweet version is known as Daifuku, which are round glutinous rice balls filled with sweet ingredients like red bean or white bean paste.

Brewing and Serving Green Tea

  1. Brew the green tea properly. Boil the water until it just reaches a simmer, then remove from heat and wait 30-60 seconds before using it, so it can cool down a bit.
    • The water temperature and quality of water you use to brew the tea are essential details to making a good cup of green tea.[8]
  2. Rinse a teapot, preferably ceramic, with hot water. This is called warming the pot, and ensures the tea does not get cooled down by the pot itself.[8]
  3. Place your tea leaves in the warmed pot. If possible, try to use loose tea leaves for higher quality tea, as opposed to tea bags.
    • The standard guideline is one teaspoon (3 grams) of tea for each 8 ounce cup of water. So if you are serving yourself, just use one teaspoon of tea. Adjust this amount based on the number of people you are serving.[8]
  4. Pour the boiled water over the tea leaves and let them steep. The steeping time depends on the type of green tea you are using. Generally, you should steep green tea for 1-3 minutes.[9]
    • Once the tea has been steeped enough, strain out the tea leaves.
    • Green tea that is steeped too long will taste bitter and have an unbalanced flavor. So try not to over steep the leaves.
    • If the tea tastes very mild, use more tea leaves or steep the leaves for a minute longer.
  5. Take out a set of ceramic cups. Traditionally, Japanese green tea is always served in small, ceramic cups with white color inside, so you can see the color of the tea. Using ceramic cups is important because the pot and cups will affect the taste of the tea.[10]
    • A traditional Japanese tea service will place the pot, cooling vessel, cups, tea coasters, and cloth on a tray.
    • The size of the cups is also considered very important, as the smaller the cups, usually the higher the quality of the tea being served.[10]
  6. Pour the tea into the cups in thirds. The first pour of tea is weaker than the last pour of tea, so to ensure the flavor is equally distributed in each cup, fill each cup a third of the way. Then go back and fill the second third in each cup, and then finally fill each cup all the way. This is called "cycle pouring".[11]
    • Never pour someone a full cup of tea, as this is considered impolite. Ideally, the cup should be about 70% full.[12]
  7. Avoid adding any sugar, milk or other additives to your tea. Green tea has a very robust flavor and if brewed properly, tastes delicious on its own.
    • If you always drink sweetened and flavored tea, the taste of "raw" green tea may seem off-putting at first, but try a few cups before making up your mind.
  8. Re use your tea leaves. You can often get up to three brews from the same leaves. Do this by simply pouring the hot water over the leaves in the pot and steeping for the same amount of time.[13]

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-benefits-of-green-tea
  2. ↑ http://authoritynutrition.com/top-10-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-green-tea/
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 http://www.myjapanesegreentea.com/basic-etiquette-for-japanese-green-tea
  4. ↑ http://www.teaclass.com/lesson_0302.html
  5. ↑ http://www.justhungry.com/hosting-green-tea-tasting-party-may
  6. ↑ http://travel.cnn.com/hong-kong/drink/12-things-about-tea-your-local-dim-sum-restaurateur-wont-tell-you-417281
  7. ↑ http://simplymochi.com/
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 http://www.teasource.com/teas/Preparing.html
  9. ↑ http://shizuokatea.com/gtk-how-to.php
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 http://www.o-cha.net/english/cup/pdf/36.pdf
  11. ↑ http://japanesehandcraft.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-serve-green-tea-vol-1-basic.html
  12. ↑ http://travel.cnn.com/shanghai/eat/ireport/12-things-about-your-cha-local-tea-house-wont-tell-you-669772
  13. ↑ http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-brew-loose-leaf-green-t-139441
Retrieved from "https://kipkis.com/index.php?title=Drink_Green_Tea&oldid=326249"