Not just to drink: tea can be used for food too!

When you think of tea, the first image that springs to mind is a wonderful cup full of the steaming beverage. Sometimes, you may think of iced tea instead. Either way, the image is always accompanied by memories of the flavour. But in both these images, tea is just a beverage. While that is the main form in which the world enjoys the many different types of tea, there are several other things you can do with this herb in the kitchen.

Here are some creative, and delicious, ways in which you can use tea as a food – whether you want to use it as a flavour or as the base:

1. Water/broth for cooking
   Making pastas and soups requires water. But if you want, you can use tea as the base water for your pasta, soup or vegetable broth. This can add a nice flavour to the food. The most common way to do this is to boil and prepare your tea, and then let it cool down to room temperature. Once it has cooled down, you can use it for the broth. The possibilities are endless: use it to cook noodles, soup, quinoa etc.
2. Infuse with butter
   A lot of people end up spending a fortune on special herbed-butter. However, you do not need to do so, if you are a little bit creative and hands-on. Simply choose a flavour from the different types of tea, add it to a saucepan full of melted butter, and let it stay for a few minutes. Remove the tea bag, and you’ll find that the butter has been infused with the tea flavour. This can go perfectly for preparing omelettes, french toast, or with pancakes.
3. Cookie Flavour
   You can munch on tea flavoured cookies. Simply grind the tea from tea bags into powder and add it to the mixture of other ingredients that go into making your cooking dough. There are several recipes you can look up for this purpose, as well as which ingredients will mix best for a tea-based dough.
4. Smoothies
   You can do this in several ways, and the internet is full of different recipes made with different types of tea. You can infuse milk with tea using a similar method for infusing butter with tea. And once the milk has been flavoured, you can use that as an ingredient with the other fruits and veggies, spinning around in a blender.
5. Tea flavoured ice cubes
   Sometimes, just sipping iced tea isn’t enough. The beverage can be also be iced! Simply boil tea, then cool it to room temperature, pour the cooled down tea in an ice tray and let it freeze. You can use the tea-infused ice cubes with your favourite juices, smoothies or even iced tea!

Be sure to try these methods out and look for more recipes once you feel confident in your experiments. Also try out different types of tea for a wide variety of flavours. Happy cooking!