Don't throw away brewed green tea leaves! - j-okini

Don’t throw away brewed green tea leaves!

When I found an article about this tile on a Japanese web-site about green tea, I was so happy to share with you since I was promoting our Matcha and Sencha that they are in powder form and you can ingest 100% nutrition but with Genmaicha the same thing does not apply. We have also launched Sencha loose leaf for Kombucha Brewers in January 2019!

In fact there are many family in Japan especially in the area where green teas are produced, they do eat brewed green tea leaves without throwing away. Unlike tea leaves which are in the tea bags, when you buy whole leave green tea like our product, the quality of leaves are high and there is full of antioxidants. Therefore the idea is that instead of throwing away the leaves after you brew tea, you keep it in the fridge and cook it with your rice, pasta, omlette and using in the marinade for chicken or fish. If you do not like the taste of tea in your food, you can put it in the tomato sauce with other vegetables then you don’t really taste it.

The idea of not leaving any wastes is also attracting for me. As a Japanese, I was taught not to waste food at home and also at school. One of the culture shocks I had after moving to Europe was that people (not everyone!) do throw away a lot of food because they cook a lot and cannot eat everything and they end up throwing away. Even at restaurants, they serve a lot of food more than one can eat. When we eat rice, I was taught not to leave the last bit of rice as well because farmers made a lot of effort to produce rice and there is also some saying in Japan that if we leave rice and throw away, we will become blind…:p This is a bit of threatening to say to kids but I also teach my kids not to waste food.

If you like soy sauce, you can cook with the following with your fried rice:

1 table spoon of our Genmaicha or Sencha loose leaf tea leaves after brewed
1 table spoon of sesami oil

1 table spoon of soy sauce
1 table spoon of mirin
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of grated ginger

Combine the seasoning in a bowl
Heat sesami oil in a pan and fry the brewed Genmaicha green tea leaves then add the seasoning
Take out the leaves from the frying pan. Cook your fried rice and add it with the rice and mix well.

You can use the above seasoning to marinade chicken as well. You can find the recipe of my chicken marinade from here and just add the Genmaicha leaves or Sencha loose leaf that you reserved after you used.

Do you know Okonomiyaki? It’s Japanese style omelette with veggies and pork and I also add used tea leaves when I have. The below photo is the batter before cooking. I forgot to take a photo after I cooked it but I will post it next time 🙂

I tried to eat our Kariganecha too after brewing. Since it is stem, it is hard to eat it… But my 7-year old son loved eating it alone! It’s good for him because the stem is rich in calcium, L-theanine – to boost concentration and memory which is good for study and makes him calm!