Read these 6 Pairing Tea With Food Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Tea tips and hundreds of other topics.
When you're having a party, serving good tea can be a challenge. However, being able to provide some delicious, healthy refreshment makes the challenge worthwhile. To be able to provide perfectly brewed tea to your guests, try some of these tea serving tips:
You'd like to have a tea party, but you don't want to serve platters of sugary foods to your guests. It isn't a healthy way to eat and you'd like to avoid tempting guests that are on specific diets for their health to break their dietary rules. However, now you aren't sure about the menu. Is there a guide for food to serve with tea?
While many tea party pictures show people indulging in cookies, pie tarts and other sugary confections, there are actually quite a few options for less sugary dishes that you can serve at the event. Try some of these traditional treats for a healthier party menu:
You've got a ton of things to do to get ready for your tea party and the last thing you want to worry about is baking a few dozen delicate little tarts. You've decided to serve tea sandwiches instead, but now you need to find some delicious filling recipes. What do people typically serve on tea sandwiches?
Cream cheese is a common ingredient in many tea sandwich recipes. It helps keep the sandwiches in one piece and isn't so strong that it overpowers the teas being served. While cream cheese cucumber sandwiches are a very easy, traditional filling, you can shake things up a bit and still have a quick and easy filling. Try adding dried cranberries or pecans to the cream cheese in place of the cucumbers.
Salad type sandwiches are also very popular. Reinvent the egg salad sandwich by adding some Marrakesh mint green tea to the salad. Tuna, chicken and seafood salad sandwiches are also all common choices, although tuna salad can be a bit overpowering for most teas and should be a last resort for most menu planners. If you'd like to have a fish sandwich on the menu, a salmon spread is probably a better choice.
You love tea tins and have gathered quite a collection of tins filled with loose leaf tea. However, when you want a refreshing cup of tea, you reach for your tea pockets instead of getting out a tea tin. You simply prefer the convenience of the pockets over loose tea, but you do feel a bit guilty when you see all those tins of tea going to waste. What you need is a way to use up loose leaf tea without having to brew up a pot of tea.
Why not try adding the tea to food recipes? Loose leaf tea is a delicious way to enhance the flavor of many dishes, from salads to main courses. Try one of these recipes for simple ways to add loose leaf tea to food:
You know that there are foods that use green or black teas right in the recipe, but you'd like to try to use some of your favorite loose leaf herbal teas. However, you don't want to create unappetizing meals, either. You need some ideas for ways to use herbal tea in your menus.
Herbal teas are just as easy to add to recipes as green or black teas are. Simply think about the flavor of the tea you'd like to use and how it complements the foods you usually drink it with. For example, a delicious lavender tea usually goes well with a variety of desserts. Try substituting a bit of lavender tea for water in your lemon sponge cake or your famous vanilla cupcakes. Chamomile tea leaves can be a great way to enhance your favorite shortbread recipe.
Mint has been paired with lamb for centuries, but it also is delicious with pork. Try substituting a cup of brewed mint tea for some of the liquid in a dish or adding a teaspoon of dried mint tea to a pork rub. Mint tea leaves can also be surprisingly delicious in salsa or some salad dressings.
Don't forget soups. Lemon balm and mint are both commonly used in many soup recipes.
You know that certain teas enhance certain foods more than other teas, but you aren't sure if your taste buds are up to the challenge of making the selection. Since you wanted to set up a tea tasting event for your friends and family, you need to be sure you get the pairings right. Is there a simple way to figure out which teas are best with which foods? Actually, while some teas definitely taste better with specific foods, you can generally get things right by following a few basic guidelines.
To choose the best tea to serve with food for your tea tasting menu, you should: