It's true! AND my family liked it!!
I went online to find recipes using Lapsang Souchong tea. For those of you who haven't sniffed my sample of this tea yet, it's a very smoky tea - for good reason - the leaves are smoked after oxidization. There's a campfire smell when you open the bag. I knew I'd probably rather cook with it than drink it - although, possibly on a cool autumn day, it might just be the cup of comfort I seek.
So I found this recipe called Lazy Day Chicken on a site, submitted by Christine Torres:
Ingredients
· 4 skinless chicken breasts
· 1 cup sliced carrots
· 2 tsp Lapsang Souchong tea, steeped in 1 cup water
· 1 tsp dried parsley
· 1 tsp garlic salt
· 1 tbsp honey
· 2-3 tbsp barbecue sauce
· 1 tsp flour
· 2 cups rice
Directions
Steep tea. Add to large skillet with 2 cups water (including tea leaves), parsley, garlic salt, honey, flour and barbecue sauce. Add carrots and chicken breasts, sliced lengthwise into strips for easy cooking. Cover and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes. Serve over rice.
I didn't have any parsley, so I left that out. I also tasted the tea leaves after they had steeped and decided my family wouldn't appreciate if they were in the dish - a little too bitter for the palate in this house I'd say. I used dried roasted garlic, rather than garlic salt. All in all, the dish was well accepted. I think there is room for improvement, though, so next time I make it, I will use maple syrup instead of honey - I think it would complement the smokiness. Also, my hubby would have liked the smoky taste to be a bit bolder, so I would steep 3 teaspoons of the loose tea, longer, in the 2 cups hot water. It's a black tea and I didn't want it to get bitter, so I steeped for about 3 minutes - I'll try up to 5 minutes and experiment with the tea quantity. I'd add freshly ground black pepper while cooking as well. The 1 tsp flour wasn't doing anything to thicken it at all, so I'd leave that out, until the last minute or two and then mix 1 tbsp flour with a small bit of cold water in a bowl, then add a bit of the broth to the bowl, and then pour the mix back into the frying pan to thicken the sauce.
There was a little of the meat mixture left over this morning, but no rice. So I cooked up some rice noodles and sent the leftovers in Sarah's thermos for lunch today. What a yummy lunch she's getting!
Feel free to share your cooking experiments with Lapsang Souchong, or any other tea for that matter, by leaving me a comment.
Happy sipping and blessings, Ann
