HAVE I GONE CRAZY? Adding Salt to Tea!
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- In ancient China, salt was a very precious commodity which was added to tea. Why? Does salt improve the taste of tea?
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When brewing beer people use distilled water and add back in brewing salts (gypsum, baking soda, salt, epsom salt) to build the perfect water mineral profile to match the style of beer being brewed...I bet the same concept could apply to tea.
Qi Fine Teas in Portland, Oregon does this with their Formulated Water Series!
A bit of salt on pineapple seems matching. Not sure about tea though.
@@laikeatlim8261 If salty ham belongs on sweet pastries then everything is a go!
Someone once made a video why India´s cuisine is so special, and the gist of it was that the flavor profiles shouldn't realistically make sense, yet work perfectly.
I have used salt in coffee and tea for several months now, enjoying the taste of them both more, thinking I was weird. Hehe. Great video! 😊❤️👍🏻
I was having a small tea ceremony with a big tea head and I was using a 20-year aged Sheng Bing Dao Pu'erh, And after pouring for the first infusion we started talking about an exciting subject and I accidentally overbrewed it. Your advice with salt addition saved my bacon as I was able to surprise them with my knowledge and cut down the bitterness of the overbrew so much so that it was still quite palatable. I do notice afterwards we use the salt as an experiment and kept using a small amount of it in each infusion just to see what happen and we actually determined that the natural sweetness that lingers on the tongue of this tea was not affected by the salt but it certainly cut out the bitterness however as you said we lost a lot of the high notes.
I've been using salt in my iced tea for years. Once I have enough leaves saved from my gongfu sessions, I add them along with a good pinch of kosher salt and water to a pot and boil on the stove. It prevents bitterness, punches up any flavorings I've added (dried fruit etc), and reduces the amount of sugar I use to satisfy my sweet tea addiction. My favorite combos are white teas blended with black tea, yan cha, or dan cong. As for my overbrews - I usually just add more water or make iced tea with it - I'll have to give the salt trick a try.
Don, you are a genius. Amazing experiment. I actually tried it with a forgotten gyokuro and I have to say, It was almost a miracle. The taste, the purity of the tea per se on my tongue. Amazing video. Thank you so much.
That's an interesting idea. I have some decent white leaf tea that is admittedly a bit old, so I tried this test.
Additionally since I have it and I was curious, I also tested adding MSG.
Without anything, it was still actually better than I expected. Fruity, woody notes, if a tiny bitterness on the finish.
Added a very small amount of MSG (the flakes are very fine), gently stirred. The richness was already quite good, but it did seem just a bit thicker/oilier.
Added just a couple grains of salt. I'll admit I couldn't detect much of a difference. Added 3 more. It was very slightly brighter from the salt, but I could now taste the more vegetal part of the tea. Very cool!
I tried another tiny dose of salt. It seems that's the limit. It now tastes vaguely of salt and loses a lot of the unique character of the leaves.
I tried another bit of MSG just for fun. It's too rich now. More suited to a soup than as a standalone drink. I'm not sure if the MSG was helpful, since the natural umami of the tea is already present. Maybe if there is a tea that is lacking in that, it might be enhanced by just a few grains.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I never understood why my grandpa would add some soy sauce to his tea whenever we dined out as a child. Thank you for enlightening me.
I wanted to make a "Tongue" dynasty joke, but I got lazy. Have a like. I'll probably try this eventually.
Guess you were left tongue twisted
I've heard of some people even adding tea to their tea.
Controversial take right here
This has been a trend for a little while in the coffe world. Watch jimm Hoffmann's video on adding salt to coffee. He advocates using a saline solution at very low and alomost imperceptible concentrations to enhance the taste of coffee. It really does do wonders. I have tried it on tea and it also works. Using a solution is much more precise than using grains of salt and disolves into water instantly.
The tea sage Lu Yu forbade all additives to water for tea - except salt!
This gives a whole new meaning to tea season.
That subtle green tea teabag diss though 😂
Interesting, I'll try tomorrow!
I've got a masala chai recipe worked out that the family loves. The other day I felt like it was missing a little 'something'. When I'm cooking and that happens the 'something' is usually salt, so I tried it. Sure enough, that was it. Seems like it kinda married the individual flavors into a rounder whole.
I love your experiments... The next time I have an "accident" in brewing I will certainly give this 'salt idea' a go... At some point (after I try it) I will come back and write my opinion down in the comments... Cheers Don!
My wife and I went on the Paleo diet a couple years ago. We used a pinch of baking soda for our tea and coffee to make it alkaline so that we could drink it. Baking soda neutralizes acids thereby raising the pH level to a more alkaline character. We also had to learn to use it sparingly so that the beverages were still palatable. I have yet to try salt though. My mother in law adds salt to her coffee.
All right now when is the James Hoffman / Mei Leaf crossover episode happening
i have and always will ask for a v60 tea brewing
We tried but he passed unfortunately.
@Paula Johnson just curious but what makes him a creep?
the secret is to add just a small pinch, per pot
I have been wondering about salt in tea since I read about it in The Book of Tea. Interesting, thank you for the video!
If the minerality of the water used to infuse tea affects tea flavor, then I'd imagine that using slightly salted water to infuse tea would change tea flavors in different ways compared with salting the extracted infusion. I'll often salt water I use to overnight thermos brew ripe teas and find the result is as you describe here, rounder, creamier, savory and umami.
I'm pretty much immune to bitter at this point. I routinely drink Darjeelings that have been steeped for over 5 minutes-- which can be the apex of bitter IMO. Why do I endure this you ask? For the stronger flavor I get with increased steeping. (I realized after years of drinking tea that my favorite part of the cup is almost always the dregs.)
This comment is not medical advice, but rather what helps me. You might also want to use salt, if you notice that you have a bad habit of drinking too much plain water without eating anything salty as too much water by itself is more toxic than alcohol.
It can be interesting adding it to the reds (I have never tried it) but I would never add salt to overbrewed green or oolong to get rid of bitterness. If I overbrew a green or oolong I usually dilute by adding just pure water.
I read that salt gets rid of some if not all the bitterness in coffee just 5 minutes ago so i imagine the same happens to Tea. I also heard some people add just the tiniest bit of baking soda to get rid of bitterness and keep tea from becoming cloudy and it enhances the flavor. Seems to have the same affect as Salt, no? for 8 Cups of water, just 1 eight a teaspoon of baking soda goes into the water for example. I tried it and I think it does make a difference but its so smalllll. I already use Purified, preferably spring water when making Tea so there's that as well. I did something dumb the other day and let almost a whole Tablespoon of Baking Soda drop into my 8 Cups of water (tea) and it didnt really do anything bad.... Unnnnnnnnnnnntil I went to arnold palmer my Tea, and the Acid reacted to the baking soda LOL... Terrible. Made me want to throw up.
ANyway, can't wait to see if a light dash of salt will do anything on top of alreadyu adding baking soda in my tea.
Yeah, why not. I mean, salt is one of the oldest flavour enhancers known. Add a tiny amount to pineapple or watermelon and be surprised.
Exactly
it could also be interesting to put a little kombu-dashi in the tea. I think kombu-dashi has an interesting, gentle, slightly salty taste that might go well with some teas.
$0.86 will get you 26 ounces of table salt. A grain of salt is about 0.0000585 grams or 0.000002064 ounces. That's somewhere around 12,596,900 grains of salt. If you really wanted to splurge, you could spend an extra $0.14 to get another 1,900,000 grains to take you up to an exhilarating 14,500,000 grains of salt. Just imagine how much fun you could have with almost 15 million grains of salt. You could put some in your neighbor's car's gas tank. You could put some in your own gas tank. You could even pour some into a water bottle and drink it to pretend you're lost at sea and can only drink salt water. The possibilities are as endless as the number of grains of salt you have.
Always interesting, thank you, Don :)
I would be really interested in a vid where you taste teas form asia-stores!
I'm wondering if a pinch of monosodium glutamate would make a positive effect on tea...
There is Theanine for this
The crushing was hard to watch, but definitely have to try the salt.
It's a good method for good teas that aren't as intense as you would like. It's good for rock oolongs. Haven't tried it yet with other types
Tried this with heicha and sencha man what a game changer
The “lei cha” from Taiwan and southern China Hakka people are probably the descendent of the pre Tang Dynasty tea
Forgotten brew is my speciality :))
I really would love to see Don sampling tea from David's Tea 👀
I wonder what the effect is when you combine salt with kuding.
How about tea bags? 🤔 I mean you had mention salt in water...
I Love this video! However, I also miss the usuall one. Don you should start a tv channel!! 😜
Didn't you do this before. drinking Frisian tea with Axel you added that funky rock salt that crackled, then dropped the tea ware on the floor. lol
That was rock sugar
Do you have any tips on what could be used in place of a gaiwan I bought a cast iron tea pot with an infuser but honestly it's kinda crappy and the infuser is way too small but all your videos really make me wanna try making tea gong fu style 😭
A small bowl and a plate to cover. Pour through the strainer from one bowl to another.
put it at japanese green tea and make it a fish soup to throw up :p
This just might be the most sacrilegious video I have seen all week.
Naturally they knew about this in the Tongue dynasty. ....... ...................
Oh my god the noise of you crushing the tea leaves gave me the most intense discomfort
I know! Did you run to your safe space? I did.
Have I gone crazy? Depends whether this is an experiment or a practice. Crazy if its a practice.
Hi don I'm from arunachal pradesh India. Would you like to taste our green tea?
Sodium coagulates proteins
Sugar gives Tea... Taste... Like I've been saying ever since I've started drinking tea. Plain Tea has No Taste For Me.
I read that adding salt to tea can increase the risk of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma. Is this true? Thanks for sharing.
I season some of my tea with cardamom
What did that kettle do to you ;-;
When was the tang dynasty?
Tea soup??! That's bonkers!
Soup was Pre 700AD approx.
@@MeiLeaf that is crazy!
In Myanmar they still regularly consume tea leaves as a type of greens. The put it on salads mostly but also on rice and stir-fry dishes. They give a slight bitterness but combined with other ingredients taste absolutely delicious. Also, you can buy ''Miang'' in Northern Thailand, that's a kind of fermented tea leaves, which elderly people still eat. In places like Chiang Rai you can get it at local markets (away from tourist markets). I heard about tea leaves still being used for soups in Japan as well but I don't have a first hand experience of that. So, all in all, tea leaves are still being used for other purposes rather then just infusions.
someone watched "tea drunk's" lecture... :-)
I prefer sugar (or honey) in my tea.
Try vinegar
"Have I gone crazy?" This is a Donald Trump type of rhetorical question. It is the type of question daring individuals ask before taking daring dives that lead to great discoveries...
Oh my goodness don you have gone mad
Remember the time he added coffee beans to brew?
What's next?
Reuben k Now, if he even DARED to use CBD in his tea... it’d make him an ABDOLUTE PSYCHOPATH
Salt is basic. Use Italian sea salt, its tasteless.
Tasteless salt? That makes no sense think about it. It's like tasteless sugar xD
never has sanity left you DON thou among WOMEN as the keyhole’s light has predicted SPOKEN