14 Chefs From 14 Countries Make Tea | Epicurious

You are about to see 14 different chefs from 14 different countries make tea. Tea is from China, the south part of China. I'm going to make a green tea today, Biluochun, which is from my hometown Suzhou. The direct translation is green smell spring. It got its name from the shape. So when tea masters are roasting the tea, they will curl the tea leaves up a little bit. And then the more you see the fuzziness, the better because it's more fresh. We're going to add water in the tea bowl first. For green teas, 175 degree and clear glass tea bowls are recommended because you'll see the tea leaves sink to the bottom. It's like a show, and you'll see the tea leaves kind of dance in water. And make sure you don't cover the tea when you're steeping it to prevent overheating. For high quality fresh tea leaves, it only takes 30 seconds for the first steep. When most of the tea leaves are in the bottom, we can serve. So you can make two more steep from these tea leaves, but you can steep them for a little bit longer, the second and third steep, 30 seconds to one minute. Really good Biluochun is floral, is a little bit of nutty, fruity. It has like a lingering sweetness to it. Today I'm going to be making masala chai. This is also the tea that's most commonly made throughout the country. People start their days with it, people end their days with it. I have about three cups of water. I'm going to be ripping hot. While my water is boiling, I have a one and a half inch knob of ginger. So I'm going to get that crushing in a mortar and pestle. So you don't have to make a paste out of it, but you do want to crush it. I also have about three pods of cardamom, which I'm just going to lightly crush so they release their aroma into the water. You really need to make sure your water is boiling before you put your ginger inside. Otherwise your water is going to turn bitter. I have some cinnamon, very small piece, a few cloves and some black peppercorn. And you're going to get your heat down to a medium. Let this boil for about a minute or two. You can add as many aromats and as many things as you want. So the water's changed its color. As you can see, it's got this really nice yellowish hue to it. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go in with my tea. We use a certain kind which is called CTC, which means crushed, tear and curl. These are tea leaves that are dry, they're crushed, they're torn and they're curled. If you ever look at tea bags, the tea that you're going to find inside is usually always CTC. And you add three teaspoons of sugar. Let it boil for about three minutes. You're going to see it gets really nice and fragrant. I know the tea is completely infused because it's got a really really nice dark color. Get the heat down to a low. I'm going to add my milk in slowly. You want to have black tea without any milk, that's also completely an option. But I really like my tea a little milky. You let it come to the brim, you turn down the heat. You let it come to a boil again, you turn down the heat again. It's just a way of making sure that the tea leaves completely infuse in the milk. It smells exactly how my house used to smell early in the morning. To anyone watching this, they know the significance of this cup. All the tea stalls will always serve tea in this. And I'm going to hold it right here because it's too hot to hold at the base. It's milky, I taste the tea, it's the perfect sweetness. I feel the warmth of the ginger at the back of my throat. So comforting and just pure nostalgia. Today I'm going to teach you guys and talk a little bit about chimarrão. It's a tea made from yerba mate, very traditional in Brazil. Start with the indigenous people before the Europeans arrive in Brazil. They used to chew on this herb, eventually they start drinking it before they go out for hunting at night. When you're going to work in a field, you're always carrying your yerba mate with you, hot water. This is the cuia, the traditional cup that we use. It's made out of the porango. It's a fruit and after carved and dry, we call it cuia. It comes with this like metal straw. Please don't call it straw, we call it bomba. And this is where you keep your yerba mate. There are pieces of the wood and also it's like very fine grounded. This is a really good quality one. You see like how green it is. I grab a yerba mate and I don't feel it. I put it like two thirds of the cuia and then why do I have this? I need a place to put my bomba. So flip it, I shake it, then I'm gonna have the space on the other side so I can put my straw on it. And I'm gonna press so I can add my water to it and it won't fall apart. The water has to be between 70 and 75 Celsius so it doesn't burn the herb. And I'm gonna fill on the side, otherwise it's gonna fall and I have to do it all over again. Once you add the water, the tea has to absorb and infuse a little bit. I need to close this part of the straw so the water doesn't come inside of it. Flip it a little bit and now I need to wait at least like two minutes and then you sip it. It's for sure stronger than a cold brew. Back home in Britain, there is no problem too large that can't be solved by a good cup of tea. These guys are kind of fancy. They're in a nice little cotton pouch. You can also buy the tea that comes in bags of like a hundred. My personal favorite is Yorkshire gold or Yorkshire tea. You do one tea bag per person and you do an extra bag for the pot. So we're going to fill it up with some fresh hot water. It needs three, four minutes. If you're drinking tea out of a teapot, traditionally, in my house at least, the milk goes into the cup first. It's quite a point of contention which goes first, the milk or the tea. Pretty much all teas in Britain you're going to drink with milk. You can add sugar if you want. Super simple. I've done it here with some kind of posh snacks. You'll always have some kind of thing, treat, snack to eat with it, whether you're eating cookies or chocolate biscuits. So cheers. Yeah, it's a good brew. Zobo is a hibiscus tea. It's always hot in Nigeria, very warm weather. So this is the number one go-to iced beverage that you can have. It's tarty, it's sweet, it's whatever you want to make it. It's very versatile. So we're just going to take some fresh Zobo leaves. We get it from the north of Nigeria and add that to some boiling hot water. This is pre-blended ginger. Then we're going to add just a little bit of cloves to give it that aromatic taste. And then lastly, we add pineapple rind because it gives it that extra tart on the edge flavor. Some people add lemon, but I just like to use the whole pineapple. Now we have our blended pineapple. Some people add the fruits after it's chilled, but I like to cook mine down. So now I'm going to add some sugar and we're going to let this dissolve in there. For this quantity, you would want this to cook for about 45 minutes to an hour and just keep adding water and water. The longer, the better actually because you're extracting more of the concentrate from the leaves. Okay, so it's cooked long enough and now it's time to sieve it and let it rest to cool. You can serve it hot, chilled, frozen. I like to drink it cold with some ice, add a little mint, some cucumber on top of that. You know, look at how beautiful that color is. Cheers! I can taste the cloves, the spice from the ginger, the fruitiness from the pineapples. Like, it is so, oh, I'm blushing. It's really refreshing. So today, we're making bush tea. A big thing in Trinidad, this one is more medicinal. You know, a great joke in the Caribbean is tea fixes everything, right? So if you have a headache, your grandparents will prescribe tea. So we drink this all the time. We start with the garlic, smash it, a couple pieces of ginger, bay leaves, not too much because bay leaf could be overpowering. Fever grass, this is called lemongrass here but we know it as fever grass. So you just break it just to kind of get the oils out. Fresh mint, really rustic, you just break it up and add it in here. We have cilantro, we have culantro and you just wait for it to boil and then you take it off and let it steep for a few minutes. All right, y'all, so it looks like it's ready. You see the color? It's green. So now, you have to drink it piping hot. So it's supposed to almost burn your lips. Another thing, this cup, the enamel cup, you can't drink bush tea in anything else. I don't know why, that's just how I was taught. So this one, the first one, that's the traditional way, that's the way the grown-ups drink it. You add some sugar, preferably brown sugar and this, at least when I was a kid, they would add some condensed milk. This used to just make it more palatable for the kids, almost like a chai. Basically, two versions of Trinidadian bush tea just as I remembered it. This is supposed to feel like a warm hug. Also, when you drink this, you're supposed to burp and that's when the elders said it's working, whatever it's working for. So the next time you have a headache, you should try some bush tea. So today, we are making Algerian mint tea. It's like a super casual tea after dinner. Some people do drink it in the morning, but it's mostly in the afternoon during Ramadan, especially late nights, so it keeps us awake so we can fast later. So we are using this beautiful copper pot that is very difficult to find. In Algeria, they can do it over top on the barbecue, in the Sahara, on the sand and they're very solid for the fire. So the blend that I'm using is just dry mint tea and green tea from Algeria and two tablespoons of sugar. You want to put the sugar with the water so it helps the sugar to melt and usually they like to make it like more on the sweet side. I don't like when it's too sweet. Once it starts steaming out, your tea will be ready. Turn it off now and I'm going to add the fresh mint because I like it super strong. And then you're going to let it sit for a few minutes to have the flavor being like all together. I brought this special glass heritage for my mom because the sugar is in it. Push up arms up and down and pour it back. It helps the tea to mix and once it's all the bubbles are fully full, it means that the tea is ready to go. So you usually have like some Arabic songs, you know, with the vibe, dancing and I love drinking tea with the Algerian crib called the barlil. The move. The tea is amazing. It's really good, very strong. The way I like it and it's not too sugary. Today I'm making tea de jamaica, hibiscus tea. This terracotta pot because that's how my grandma used to do it. So we're gonna do some water, piloncillo, raw sugar and then hibiscus flower. Tastes like cranberry and it's very aromatic and it's very refreshing. A little bit of ginger because ginger helps digest. We use this as a medicine. My mom and grandma used to make me this when I used to eat too much. And then cinnamon as the aroma of comfortness. See I feel good now. Bay leaves, another aroma and oranges. It needs to add some acidity and another type of sweetness. Now I'm just going to simmer this for 10-15 minutes. It's been boiling for 15 minutes already. I'll strain it over here. It smells like home, like grandma is here. That looks phenomenal. And then we're going to finish it with a little bit of lemon. And there you have it, my hibiscus tea. Salud. It's tart, it's lemony, it's sweet, so delicious. Today I make Apfelschnapste and it's apple black tea with schnapps and other spices. It's a very common thing in Austria. You go skiing, you come back frozen and that really makes it nice and cozy. Let's start with the tea. Hot boiling water and then we have here the apple skin dried out. After the war there was not a lot and they used really everything. Two cinnamon sticks in there and a star anise. If you want to have your little caffeine you can put in a little bit of black tea also. Let it soak a little bit. It will give you just another undertone of flavor and now we let it steep 10-15 minutes and you will have all the flavor there. Check in here. Oh yeah, the apples are soaked in here. I'm gonna pour it right into my cup. We do need a little bit of sweetness. Here we have just simple syrup. As a kid we had this. We can drink it anytime we want. Grown-ups, they had a little spike with a good schnapps because as soon as it gets hot that quality of the schnapps will get better. But if you have another good schnapps it will get worse. For this one I had the perfect cup. It's the naughty cup, that's what I use. It's really good and it calms me down. So today I'm gonna make cha da, very iconic tea drinks in Vietnam. But my favorite drink whenever I go back to Vietnam is cha chanh tat with young coconut meat. In Vietnam you will see Thai Nguyen green teas a lot. Today I bring in Anna Thai Nguyen tom no. They particularly pick only one tea leaf and the bud on top. After they harvest everything they will put in ovens. One of the things that's different between this kind of tea and mass production, the farmer use wood fire. So the process it will take a lot longer. It will develop different layers of flavors. I will just pour the water and brew here. The temperature is 185 Fahrenheit. Brew it for only two minutes. You will see the color is lighter. I just showed you the simple version of tea and now I'm gonna show you my favorite version of cha ta. So first we're gonna crack the coconut. Pour the coconut juice in here. So with this particular tea you want the coconut meat not too old. It's a lot more tender. You can pour tea in here and I will add calamansi. Out of all the citrus fruit this is one of my favorite. It's not overwhelming and it just balances everything out. It has a very beautiful floral flavor and smell to the dish. I love to eat the skin too. It adds more flora to the drink and adds ice. And then we also pickle dragonton melons. Super sour. But we have been pickling it for three months and it turned really nice flavor. And if you want you can just add a little bit of juice. It's good. Nothing can beat it in hot weather in Vietnam. So today we're making aromáticas. Aromáticas doesn't have a specific list of ingredients. It's more about the technique of brewing different fruits and herbs and spices. Aromáticas are usually bought on the streets. You will see like a big pot boiling, boiling, boiling. So we have water boiling. Gonna start putting our panela. Sugar cane juice that has been reduced and shaped is also called piloncillo. For my own version of my aromática I will add some hibiscus flowers, some cinnamon. So we're going to add some ginger as well. And then I'm gonna add some red apples. And now I'm gonna add some citruses, oranges, lemon and some delicious blood oranges. I will add any delicious thing that I think that it will go really nice and also how beautiful it is. It is already done. It's already brewed. For this recipe I'm gonna put some strawberries, blackberries and some raspberries. Let's see. Look how beautiful this color is. So now we're gonna add some of like lime juice. So yummy. It is sweet for sure but I know it's not the sweet of like something that is being added like a lot of sugar. It's more about the sweet of fruits. It feels super warm. Reminds for sure. So today we're making hojicha. It is everyday drinking tea in Japan. It's made with the same leaves as green tea but it is roasted and it brings out a sort of nutty almost sweet quality similar to chocolate. Right now I have a tablespoon and a half of tea leaves and we'll be pouring in about two and a half cups of water. The ideal temperature is 80 degrees Celsius. I'm gonna let this steep about a minute and a half. The color has turned a really nice rich brown. It's really beautiful. This is a great mellow wine down tea. Today we are making some Thai tea. You can find Thai tea anywhere on the street but most famous in southern part of Thailand. People would think about making tea you need like tea leaf but Thai tea has a little bit different way to do it. This is the Thai tea powder. So you know the way they roasted them they keep stir until it's powder and it breaks out more flavor from the tea leaf. And now we're gonna add hot water into it. You can see the color come out right away. We will stir a little bit and then we will leave it five minutes. All right so now I think our tea is ready. So we're going to separate the tea leaf using this tea bag. The amount of sugar is really depend on how sweet you like it. Transfer the tea into two craft back and forth to create some air and you will get even stronger aroma from the tea. This is what we call the pineapple bowl. You can see the shape of the bowl look like pineapple and the print to make Thai tea even more fun. If you'd like it to be lemon tea you can squeeze some lemon juice into it but I like it creamy way so now I will use evaporated milk into it. Oh now the color has changed again. So beautiful. Oh my god so good. Thai tea just for people who like to have fun. Today we'll be making southern style sweet tea with a little bit of lemon. I've started by bringing a gallon of water to boil but you don't want to add the tea bag when it's boiling. I'm going to take orange pico tea which is my favorite strand of black tea. We're going to start by dunking our tea bags so they get nice and saturated. Then for funsies I go once around and now we're going to let this sit and brew for at least 10 minutes. So we've steeped the tea for about 20 minutes and it's cooled down to a nice handable texture. Give them a nice little squeeze. Next up is going to be whisking in a ton of sugar. You should make sure the tea is still warm enough to dissolve by the sugar. For one gallon of tea I'm using two and a half cups of sugar and yes you heard that correctly. And you want to make sure you're whisking, moving the tea around to make sure all of the sugar gets dissolved. I'm gonna let this cool to about room temperatures so when we pour it over ice we don't dilute the tea. A few slices of lemon in there. Right back home to Virginia. Yeah just as I remembered it. Give it to grandma, give it to grandpa. They'll enjoy this. I'm thinking about my grandma right now. Oh no. That's a big song. You know that song no?