Today I'm going to talk about something a little more exotic:
★★★Citron Teas★★★
I came across "Yuzu Cha" when my host mother gave it to me as a present. She had gone to Korea on a business trip and thought I'd like it because she knows I like cooking and the like. I discovered how awesome it was as both a winter and a summer drink!
Usually you drink yuzu cha in winter because it contains a lot of vitamin c and I guess you could call it the more exotic counterpart to 'hot lemon' and the like. Just that I like the taste of yuzu a lot better.
Unfortunately, we don't really get any yuzu over here BUT the garden here is very resourceful and offered me a calamondin and a kumquat tree to work with. The branches were heavy with fruit and nobody really ate them so I thought why not make something out of them that people can enjoy? So I decided to make tea out of them. I used a yuzu cha recipe I got from a friend and had some fun with it.
Unfortunately I didn't weigh the amount of fruit I worked with, so I can only give you some estimations and take some info from the original yuzu cha recipe. If you use any other fruit, I recommend that you just experiment with it until you get a satisfying result.
There are two ways to make these kind of citron teas, one where you cook everything and can consume it right away and one where you just put it in your fridge and wait (for about 2 weeks).
Rule of thumb for the cooked version is to take 1 part fruit and 1 part sugar. For the fridge one it's 6 yuzu and 500gr rock sugar (preferably white because the brown one will make it, well, brown).
How to - fridge version:
This is the traditional way to make this kind of tea I reckon.
Sterilize a jar (using a jam jar will do the trick usually, I sometimes recycle old jars from the supermarket in which veggies/pickled or fruit were kept) with boiling water. Cut the fruit in half first and remove all the seeds (you COULD put them in but they don't taste very well). Then slice the fruit thinly.
Put about a third of the sliced fruit into the jar and cover it up with rock sugar. Repeat until the jar is full and you used up all the fruit. If your jar closes tightly, just close it and put it in your fridge for about 2 weeks. I put a little bit of plastic crap over the jar opening first before closing it so it's a bit more airtight.
After an hour or so, you'll notice that the sugar dissolved inside the jar and the bits of fruit are swimming in the fruit juice that came out. :)
How to - cooked version:
This is the version for the more lazy people and the ones who want to make larger quantities that'll keep for a while in your fridge.
Cut the fruit in half and remove the seeds. I prefer removing the seeds before I squeeze them or process them further because it saves you a lot of stress in my opinion. Once all the seeds have been removed, squeeze the fruitm or, in case they're tiny fruit like in the calamondin and kumquat case, just leave them as they are and toss them into a food processor (if you don't have mixer/blender/food processor just cut them up into tiny bits).
Pulse them as long as you want - depending on how big or small you want the pieces of fruit to be later on. If you are using calamondin or kumquat I recommend pulsing them for a little longer to make tinier bits because the peels are more bitter than the ones of the yuzu.
Put everything into a pot and add sugar. Stir while bringing the whole mixture to boil.
Sterilize jars with hot water and then fill in the hot mixture and close the jars. This will create a vacuum and help to conserve this tea for longer (my jars all pop when I unscrew them!).
When you make cold or hot tea out of it, you can put on as much or as little as you want. I usually use 2-3 teaspoons for a glass of water (+ ice cubes). I fill it up a couple of times too because the taste doesn't vanish so easily when you leave the fruit and peel stuff at the bottom of the glass in and don't eat it straight away.
Super refreshing and healthier than lemonade :) !
I drink it almost every day. Especially right now and then later during the colder months.
★★★Citron Teas★★★
I came across "Yuzu Cha" when my host mother gave it to me as a present. She had gone to Korea on a business trip and thought I'd like it because she knows I like cooking and the like. I discovered how awesome it was as both a winter and a summer drink!
Usually you drink yuzu cha in winter because it contains a lot of vitamin c and I guess you could call it the more exotic counterpart to 'hot lemon' and the like. Just that I like the taste of yuzu a lot better.
Unfortunately, we don't really get any yuzu over here BUT the garden here is very resourceful and offered me a calamondin and a kumquat tree to work with. The branches were heavy with fruit and nobody really ate them so I thought why not make something out of them that people can enjoy? So I decided to make tea out of them. I used a yuzu cha recipe I got from a friend and had some fun with it.
 |
| Calamondin I hear they're called in English? - fresh from the garden |
RECIPE:
Unfortunately I didn't weigh the amount of fruit I worked with, so I can only give you some estimations and take some info from the original yuzu cha recipe. If you use any other fruit, I recommend that you just experiment with it until you get a satisfying result.
There are two ways to make these kind of citron teas, one where you cook everything and can consume it right away and one where you just put it in your fridge and wait (for about 2 weeks).
Rule of thumb for the cooked version is to take 1 part fruit and 1 part sugar. For the fridge one it's 6 yuzu and 500gr rock sugar (preferably white because the brown one will make it, well, brown).
How to - fridge version:
This is the traditional way to make this kind of tea I reckon.
Sterilize a jar (using a jam jar will do the trick usually, I sometimes recycle old jars from the supermarket in which veggies/pickled or fruit were kept) with boiling water. Cut the fruit in half first and remove all the seeds (you COULD put them in but they don't taste very well). Then slice the fruit thinly.
Put about a third of the sliced fruit into the jar and cover it up with rock sugar. Repeat until the jar is full and you used up all the fruit. If your jar closes tightly, just close it and put it in your fridge for about 2 weeks. I put a little bit of plastic crap over the jar opening first before closing it so it's a bit more airtight.
After an hour or so, you'll notice that the sugar dissolved inside the jar and the bits of fruit are swimming in the fruit juice that came out. :)
 |
| Calamondin Tea + Ice Cubes + Water = YUM |
How to - cooked version:
This is the version for the more lazy people and the ones who want to make larger quantities that'll keep for a while in your fridge.
Cut the fruit in half and remove the seeds. I prefer removing the seeds before I squeeze them or process them further because it saves you a lot of stress in my opinion. Once all the seeds have been removed, squeeze the fruitm or, in case they're tiny fruit like in the calamondin and kumquat case, just leave them as they are and toss them into a food processor (if you don't have mixer/blender/food processor just cut them up into tiny bits).
Pulse them as long as you want - depending on how big or small you want the pieces of fruit to be later on. If you are using calamondin or kumquat I recommend pulsing them for a little longer to make tinier bits because the peels are more bitter than the ones of the yuzu.
Put everything into a pot and add sugar. Stir while bringing the whole mixture to boil.
Sterilize jars with hot water and then fill in the hot mixture and close the jars. This will create a vacuum and help to conserve this tea for longer (my jars all pop when I unscrew them!).
 |
| This is how it should look like! |
When you make cold or hot tea out of it, you can put on as much or as little as you want. I usually use 2-3 teaspoons for a glass of water (+ ice cubes). I fill it up a couple of times too because the taste doesn't vanish so easily when you leave the fruit and peel stuff at the bottom of the glass in and don't eat it straight away.
Super refreshing and healthier than lemonade :) !
I drink it almost every day. Especially right now and then later during the colder months.
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