Tea, it's more than just a drink

If you’re trying to increase your tea consumption, you can do more than just drink it – you can cook with tea as well!

We have in the past had desserts with tea flavour, but now various cocktail and food items have tea as one of their ingredients.

Nowadays, the hottest selling tea-infused food items are chocolates and candies. Whereas infusion of tea in mints, gum, and hard candies has already been popular. Green tea ice cream and tea-infused cakes and cookies are also getting popular in the markets and cafes around our country.

Jitender Chaudhary, sous chef, Jaypee Greens Golf and Spa Resort, Greater Noida, said, “Incorporating tea in food items is basically because of its flavour. Also tea is good for health. It is easy to infuse tea, especially in fish and cheese because they absorb the flavour of tea easily.

Tea stock can be used in pastas, read meat and chicken soup. Among the list of desserts, tea can be used in mousse, ice creams and even Tiramisu.” Also on offer at the restaurant are Home Smoked Green Tea Pink Salmon, Assam Tea Poached Cornfed Chicken and Jasmine Tea Aroma Pan Cake Pizza.

“The most commonly used are green tea, allegro tea, jasmine tea, other than Assam  and Darjeeling tea. People nowadays are quite health conscious and are experimenting with a lot of things. So, tea flavour is getting quite popular among the food lovers of the City,” added Jitender.

Writing about tea, how can we miss the most popular iced tea. Janti Dugal, food director of Mamagoto, said, “Other than the regular peach flavoured iced tea, we have strawberry and kiwi, mango and pineapple, tangerine, cranberry iced-tea. Made from fresh ingredients, these drinks are infused with green tea. We also choose our iced tea depending on seasons and availability of fruits.”

Royal China is offering tea-infused sticky sesame dumplings. To get the flavour of tea, boil the dumplings in water infused with tea and cook for five-six minutes.

If there is much to offer in terms of food, one can also explore the wide range of tea-infused beauty products. One can find green tea in hand lotions and moisturisers, nowadays. It is also found in make-up removers, lip balms, body washes, and soaps.