Ginger Rice Tea – Caffeine Free Tea Recipe

Ginger rice tea is made from 2 ingredients: rice and ginger.

It is considered a warming food in Chinese medicine, which has the effect of dispelling cold and nourishing yang.

What’s the best part of this tea? You can enjoy this soothing caffeine-free tea any time of day!

Benefits of ginger rice tea

In China, ginger rice tea is considered as a very healthy drink for all ages and in all seasons.

It can especially soothe your body when you catch a cold, have a digestive Issues, or have inflammation in your body.

Drinking ginger rice tea can also improve the body’s metabolism, eliminate toxins, and promote blood circulation.

Some Tips for Making Ginger Rice Tea

1. Feel free to use long or short, brown or white rice

If you ever went to an authentic Japanese restaurant, you should have been served with Genmaicha (玄米茶) made of roasted brown rice.

To make genmaicha, people will pan fry brown rice until they pop in the wok. Therefore, genmaicha is also called “popcorn tea”.

In fact, you can substitute the brown rice with any kind of rice you have at home. For example, I used short grain white rice. You can also use basmati rice, jasmine rice, or even purple rice if you don’t mind your rice ginger tea looking purple.

2. Pan frying for 2 HOURS?? How to shorten the cooking time?

Unfortunately, yes, you will have to stay by the stove for almost 2 hours to make this ginger rice tea.

But good news is that, you just need to roughly stir the rice ginger mixture every 5 minutes. You don’t have to pay full attention to the wok all the time. I set up a movie on my ipad and sat in my kitchen when I made my ginger rice tea.

And this recipe yields about 32 servings of tea, which allows you to enjoy a cup of tea every night for a month.

– To significantly shorten the cooking time:

You can use prewashed rice (musenmai), which could save you about 30 minutes.

But make sure you wash your rice to remove dirt, dust, debris, and chemicals, if you are using regular rice instead of prewashed rice.

3. Can I BAKE instead of PAN FRYING my ginger rice tea?

Let’s think about Chinese green tea. Since about 3000 years ago, Chinese people have been picking, frying, rolling, and drying green tea with hands. Yes, they literarily stir fry the tea with hands instead of with a spatula.

Different types of tea require different cooking time and cooking temperature. During the tea frying process, experienced Chinese tea experts will use their hands to tell the temperature, moisture content, and doneness of the tea leaves. So that all the tea leaves can be fried JUST RIGHT.

Tea factories nowadays would fry tea leaves in a rolling machine, which rotates continuously to heat up the tea leaves evenly.

And of course, tea leaves fried by hand will taste much better and be more expensive than those tea leaves fried by a rolling machine.

Therefore, it’s nearly impossible to bake tea in an oven. Unless you have the patience to take the tea out to give it a nice stir every other 5 minutes. However, if that’s the case, what’s the point of baking instead of pan frying the tea?

4. How to brew ginger rice tea?

– To Brew Ginger Rice Tea with a Tea Maker

1. Fill a tea maker with 2 cups of cold water.

2. Fill the tea infuser with 2 tbsps of fried ginger rice mixture , place the tea infuser into the kettle.

3. Select “Black Tea/Herbal” mode (or 2 minutes at 205 °F) to brew the tea.

4. Pour the hot ginger rice tea into a cup. Optionally stir in 1 tsp of honey to slightly sweeten the tea before enjoy.

– To Brew Ginger Rice Tea with a saucepan

1. Add 2 cups of cold water to a small saucepan.

2. Add 2 tbsps of fried ginger rice mixture to the sauce pan.

3. Bring the water to a simmer over medium high heat, turn the heat to medium low, simmer for 2 minutes.

4. Turn off the heat. Place a strainer over a cup, pour the tea through the strainer to filter out the rice and ginger.

* Note:

1. Optionally stir in 1 tsp of honey to slightly sweeten the tea before enjoy.

But, is adding honey to your hot tea toxic?

The answer is no, it’s not toxic. You can ready more about the scientific explanation in this article.

2. If you want to enjoy iced ginger rice tea, cool down the hot tea to room temperature, then add in ice cubes before enjoy.

3. Do not brew your ginger rice tea for longer than 2 minutes, otherwise you may get a pot of porridge.

Ingredients

• 480 rice (I used short grain white rice, you can also use basmati rice, brown rice, or jasmine rice)
• 120g fresh ginger

Instructions:

1. Wash 2 cups of rice with cold tap water for 3 to 4 times until the water looks clear. Drain the rice with a strainer. Try your best to shake off the remaining water.

2. Pour the rice into a large wok/frying pan, turn on medium heat to pan fry the rice for about 10 minutes until the rice grains turn dry.

3. Peel and cut 120g fresh ginger into thick matchsticks (about 4 mm thick).

4. Add julienned ginger to the wok, use medium low heat to pan fry ginger and rice for about 1 hour until the rice grains turn light brown, and the ginger matchsticks shrink half in size.

5. Turn heat to low, pan fry the ginger and rice over low heat for about 30 more minutes until the rice grains turn golden brown and the ginger matchsticks turn into black tea shape and color.

6. Turn off the heat, allow the fried ginger and rice to cool to room temperature. Transfer to a airtight food storage container, store in the fridge of up to 6 months.

My other drink recipes you will also like: