/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Sakuya-san, Sakuya-san, room cleaning stop

>>5399585

That is true. But the amount of iron imparted is probably very small, and if I had to guess, I would guess there is significantly more iron in, say, a cup of spinach. I am not even sure the iron that would be imparted from a pot would be in a very bioavailable form. My guess would be that it would be nonheme iron, which means the human body can only absorb between 2 and 20% of it, depending on a variety of factors.

>>5398695

Cast iron adds minute amounts of iron into the tea, and iron can enhance the flavour of the tea if there's just the right amount of it. That's why iron-rich clay (Yixing, Tokoname, etc) originally became popular in Southeast Asia for brewing tea.

>>5398344

I don't post on /jp/ anymore. It's sad what happened with the old threads... it's just not worth it anymore there. I'll keep an eye out for another /ck/ thread.

>>5398177

Forgot my trip.

>>5396083

But I wasn't an Anon, I had a trip! Appreciate it nonetheless though.

I'm surprised people still read that Q&A. I would consider making a new one if there was the demand for it, especially since I would no longer recommend the places I did there.

For those who don't know, it's the harvest season right now. Tea is at its freshest right now, and it's still being picked. From now until July is the best time of the year to be drinking white and green tea.

>>5126676

>Also, is there a type of pot specific for boiling water or tea?

Tea is not generally boiled with most traditions of preparation, although there are many notable exceptions. To get you the answer I think you're seeking, I would suggest something inert. A stainless steel kettle, electric or otherwise. The Chinese prefer using clay or other non-metal materials to boil their water as part of their five-elements tradition (五行). Long story short, get a stainless steel kettle.

>>5127589

>full-leaf green tea

The places I've seen in North America all use powdered green tea. I don't think they even use 'full-leaf' tea in most of the restaurants in Japan... they would be more likely to use konacha. dat haruhi

>>5127655

It also happens in Western Chinatowns, although I have never heard of paying for drinking it in-house. Usually it's just a free sample that they keep brewing over and over again.

>>5127716

This is correct. Microwaving superheats the water without the actual process of boiling it. It can be dangerous, I do not recommend it.

>>5127768

Coffee is extremely acidic. Tea is very mildly acidic by comparison, rating about one point in pH below pure water.

>>5128727

It doesn't make a bit of difference because the balls are inert, guys.

So this is how the other side lives!

>>5038751

I replied to that. >>5038148 As I said, oolong is more of a flowery flavour. The 'typical' Chinese restaurant tea is Shui Xian, a strong-roasted Wuyi oolong. That might have been what you tasted.

>>5038743

That's a good question, actually, and I may have some good answers for it.

Oolong and black tea tend to be the sweet flavours. Roasted Chinese oolong and Taiwanese lightly-oxidized oolong. Roasted Chinese oolong should be much easier to get, though. It all depends on where you would get the tea, really. You will need to be sure to brew it with soft water though, or it will probably be too bitter to taste the natural sweetness.

>>5038733

I actually do know of a place in NYC to buy sencha, but it's so expensive, you could probably order some online and pay for shipping and it would still be cheaper. Where though, I'm not sure. Den's isn't bad, and I hear their shipping within the US is cheap.

>>5037073

Too lewd. Please do not sexualize Patchouli-san.

>>5037209

Nutty is more of a green thing for the Chinese varieties. Oolong tends more toward the flowery.

>>5037217

Something easy to brew. White tea or black tea would be the best choices for this. If you are going to buy black tea, Chinese is easier to brew than the Indic types.

>>5037226

Special equipment is preferable, yes. As another Anon mentioned, you can get a teapot for quite cheap. I recommend beginners go to their local Chinatown and pick up a cheap teapot or two, which can run as cheap as a few bucks. Skip their tea though. You can get a cheap gaiwan set this way too, although I would recommend practicing learning how to brew with it using cold water 'dry' runs first.

>Will premium tea ruin grocery store Tea for me?

Yes. Don't you think life is too short to drink lousy tea?

>>5034988

There could be any number of reasons why. Brewing tea is something like tech support... there are so many things that could go wrong that without any information, the most anyone who wants to help can do is guess.

Also, I'm not a weeb just because I have impeccable taste in waifus.

>>5035035
>>5035046

These are good guesses though.

>>5032192

Some loose leaf teas are like that too, particularly sencha grown with traditional farming practices. You may enjoy it more by discarding the first brew if it's consistently weak. Make it a rinse infusion.

>>5032881

Reminds me of chifir. comrade. Well, as for following your dreams, you might find that it's quite bitter starting out, but surely it will get better if you persevere.

>>5031333

This might be a good opportunity to create a new one. I made the old one by compiling questions from the threads and adding to it as time went by. If people ask good questions, I will try to give good answers.

>>5030826

Okay, here's some stuff.

One study isn't necessarily conclusive. I wasn't even able to find the study itself... the article simply cites data from the study, which we don't know for sure would be interpreted correctly by the person writing the article. I'm assuming it would, I'm sure a paper like NP has fact-checkers in the editorial department. Has the study been peer-reviewed? Are the State of California's 'Prositition 65' correct in the limits it sets? There are a ton of questions one could ask about it.

But the tl;dr is that I doubt it's anything to worry about. I wonder if you would get far more lead in a serving of certain fish higher on the food chain (i.e. tuna, swordfish, etc) than in a serving of any supermarket tea.

>>5030692

There is fluoride naturally present in tea, yes, but there is in most first-world regulated water supplies. Literally billions of people drink tea every day, and some of the heaviest consumers of tea are also some of the longest lived.

As for lead, I have just looked into this. Apparently there was a recent study which linked bagged tea bought from grocery stores to have enough lead to recommend pregnant and nursing women not consume it. For reference:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/01/many-teas-contain-enough-lead-to-be-dangerous-for-pregnant-and-nursing-women-new-canadian-study/

There are two issues I can see here. The first is that the test parameters used do not reflect the way someone could be reasonably expected to brew tea. To quote the article:

>They found that 73% of teas brewed for three minutes and 83% of those brewed for 15 minutes had lead levels well above .5 micrograms (.005 milligrams) per litre. That is the limit deemed safe for pregnant and lactating women by Proposition 65, the State of California’s toxic-chemicals program.

I am not sure who could bear to drink bagged supermarket tea brewed for three minutes, let alone fifteen. That is the first issue.

The second issue is where this bagged tea is coming from. The tea you find in supermarkets will almost inevitably have come from large-scale industrial-type farms, which I suspect are substantially more likely to be in areas with more developed infrastructure for practical reasons. Thus tea coming from a farm perhaps an hour away from Shanghai's city limits may run a greater risk of pollution of any kind than some remote village hours away from civilization, which is where some of the best tea comes from.

>>5030553

>Some of the things that offended you might not be a big deal to other people and other things that you thought were fine might be a bigger concern.

That is possible, yes. Everyone is free to make their own judgements and decide if what I have experienced might also apply to them.

>>5030592

>I just use some random blends

That's very characteristically Russian... it's more about the style of preparation than any specific kind of tea. The Persian style of tea is also quite unique: strong black teas served with rock sugar and medjool dates.

>>5030504
>>5030508

As I've said, I won't name names, but suffice to say I am no longer a customer of Yuuki-cha.

>>5030459

Bottled soft water is an option. Don't used distilled water, because without minerals, tea is tasteless. I am experimenting right now with bamboo charcoal for improving tap water quality... no definitive results yet.

>>5030439

I have never heard of anything like that. If you can tell us anything else about it, I am quite curious. I am not aware of any direct contact between the digestive tract and the prostate, and I'd be interested if you could shed some light how caffeine could have that kind of effect on your body.

>>5030415

That sounds very... odd. Did a doctor make this diagnosis for you?

>>5030362

>packed in neat cardboard boxes with magnetic locks that had little metal boxes

Sounds neat.

>I'm honestly sick of its floral fragrances

Even the most delicious tea is not something you will want to drink every day. Tea is best enjoyed in rotation... this is why I never buy huge amounts like that. You might find relief from switching to a drastically different flavour, like a roasted green tea or a Wuyi oolong.

>>5030226

Dig in, this is a meaty one.

Here are a few examples.

There is one vendor operating out of Japan who has knowingly sold irradiated tea from one of the parts of Japan contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, yet vehemently makes claims about the purity of his tea.

Another was a shop run by someone who had been a friend of mine online for several years. He was planning to open a shop for a long time, and when he actually did it, I decided to fly out for the grand opening. As it turns out, it was not even his shop. He gave me the impression that he was the owner, and when I got there, I learned that he was in fact something more like the store manager, and he was disingenuous and passive-aggressive in person. He's quite suave, but it wears through fast and I got a good look at what was underneath. I also know that some of the information about their teas have been falsified, that for example, aged tea labelled to be of a specific vintage was merely guessed at, which I don't think I have to explain to anyone why that is unethical. I also know that at least one of the GPS co-ordinates they list for demonstrating tea origin are incorrect, which correspond not to the particular village, but to the nearest major city.

One particular Japanese vendor would seem to be prejudiced against Westerners.He has a website with both English and Japanese versions, and I know that his operating procedure is that if his stock of a tea is beginning to run low, he labels it as out of stock on his English website and reserves it exclusively for his Japanese customers. Now, some people might say that is his right, but it is an insult to his Western customers. Is our money not as good? This same vendor also tended to take a week or more to fill an order. The last order I made, for some high end Phoenix Oolong, was going on two weeks before I canceled it and asked for my money back.

>>5030146

I'm not sure which details you are interested to know. Mail carriers aren't the problem...

I have never used SAL, personally.

>>5029999

Judging by the appearance of the leaves, I would guess the quality to be low. I cannot say for certain without actually tasting them, because that is of course the only real measure of tea, but appearance can sometimes offer clues. For example, the Long Jing in that picture: Long Jing looks nothing like that. There is literally tea by the ton of fake Long Jing, and much of it isn't even a convincing copy of the original West Lake tea.

>>5030006

>Specifically the ones used as giveaways.

I do not know what you mean by this.

>>5030015

Barley tea is particularly good. It's paired even better with Korean food than with Japanese.