TEA-rrible accident

January 7, 2019 2:30 PM

I was pouring boiling water into my mug and discovered I was actually pouring it into my tin of tea. About 3 oz of Gen matcha - $15 worth, a couple months supply. It wasn't too much water and I dumped it all onto a cookie sheet to dry. What can I do besides throw it all out?

Some ideas I had -

Brew up the whole batch in concentrate form - would this last? Does tea last?

Maybe I could make a.... Tea liquour or tea infusion for cocktails?

Could I bake the leaves in the oven, good as new?

posted by rebent to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

Freeze it in small bits, then thaw the portion you'll use in a day or two? Or even freeze part of it in single-cup-portion bits? I've kept dried tea in the freezer with great success (it keeps better).
posted by amtho at 2:35 PM on January 7, 2019 [2 favorites]

You can totally make a tea infusion - I've done a few for friends who like them. Never done it with Genmaicha, but it ought to work fine. The best advice I can give is use less tea than you think, and taste frequently. And by frequently, I mean "put it in there for an hour, try it, and if that's enough, filter it then." This advice brought to you by failed experiments with too much lapsang souchong and a large bottle of vodka.
posted by Making You Bored For Science at 2:51 PM on January 7, 2019 [1 favorite]

You could try straining off the liquid and letting the leaves dry. I say this because I can usually get two cups of tea out of one standard english breakfastesque bag which is probably much lower quality than loose-leaf.

According to this link, most green teas can be re-steeped 2-3 times.

More on multiple steeps.
posted by bunderful at 3:56 PM on January 7, 2019

make cookies?
posted by some loser at 5:33 PM on January 7, 2019

green tea ice cream
posted by dum spiro spero at 5:57 PM on January 7, 2019

Best answer: If you dried out the leaves and they are actually dry, you can just store them and use them like normal. A small amount of water isnt going to ruin it, though it might be a tad weaker than before. Depends on how much water got in and how long it took you to strain the leaves back out.

If the tea is still damp, you can dry it in your oven at 200 degrees for a bit until it's totally dry again.
posted by ananci at 7:16 PM on January 7, 2019 [4 favorites]