I made pickles with tea! In January, I visted the annual Toronto Tea Festival. I enjoyed some talks on tea, visiting tea booths and of course trying a lot of tea! Now, you’re probably wondering what pickles have to do with the Tea Festival! At the festival, I picked up a cooking with tea recipe book called Hot Tea: Cooking with Camellia Sinensis by Suzanne Catty.
One of the first recipes that caught my eye was for pickles. Confused at first, I learned tea can keep pickles crunchy! How? Those tannins found in tea (which are also found in wine… hmmm… wine pickles….). Tannins are naturally occurring polyphenols.
They were quite delicious. Mine turned out a bit sweeter than expected, so I may cut back on the sugar the next time I make them and I also plan to experiment with a garlic version. I also used baby cucumbers sliced in half as a substitute, so mine look a bit different than they would if I used the English cucumbers the recipe calls for.
Anyways, the recipe is as follows and is taken directly from page 20 of the book (Catty, 2015).
The final product!
Hope you’ll give the recipe a try and let me know what you think. Happy pickling!
Steeped in Tea 
This sounds lovely! I actually experimented with something similar to this recipe with beans instead though and they were quite the treat.
By: theteacupoflife on May 10, 2016
at 4:31 pm
That sounds awesome. I’ll have to try that out too!
By: Lauren on May 23, 2016
at 9:49 pm