Eating Tea Leaves!

Several times, while in Shanghai, they often serve their teas without straining out the tea leaves. So it makes it difficult to drink the tea without eating some of the leaves. In general it is not how I like my teas but I go with the flow while in different parts of the world.

Also, what is served in the Japanese tea ceremony is a really strong and bitter matcha essentially made from powdered tea leaves.

Teavana’s Samurai Chai Mate makes an amazing seasoning for chicken and pork. A little garlic salt and chai on each side and bake….Yum and let’s talk about Lapsang there are so many uses for it it’s not even funny. As coffeetea mentioned Dr. Tea has about 3 spice rubs with tea that are all excellent. I once used the skinny chai pu-erh from teavana to season short ribs…..and I’m gonna stop on that note for sake of digging myself more into nerdiness.

Tea leaves are definitely eaten some in Yunnan province in China, and in parts of SE Asia (some of the same ethnic groups in some cases). Sometimes fresh and steamed, and also fermented in bamboo tubes (this is the type used in the Burmese style tea leaf salad, which is quite delicious). I have had the fermented tea leaf salad, though because of some scares a few years back, it’s hard to get in the US now, and so the amount of actual tea leaf in the salad is usually small. It’s an unusual taste, but I really like it.

My friend said that these deep-fried (fresh) tea leaves were pretty good:
http://floatingleavestea.blogspot.com/2011/05/taiwan-tea-tour-alishan.html
(towards the bottom). Then again, pretty much everything is good deep-fried.

If its deservedly royal and worthy then eat the leaves of heaven!The japanese can make a mean green salad with spent leaves… drink and eat royally!

Cha for tea in Taiwan serves these lightly fried tea leaves. They’re fantastic.

When I lived in China, the leaves of the local green tea were eaten pretty frequently. We’d steep out high quality spring leaves, and when they were spent, we’d toss the leaves with a bit of sesame sauce and soy sauce for a really delicious salad!

Also, folks would take the spent leaves and roll them with meat (usually beef) and spices and use that for dumpling filling. Very very yummy.

I have also been known to eat un-steeped Dragonwell style leaves. They are really good! It’s perhaps one of the more expensive snack foods around, but there you go. When you chew them up, it actually does taste like decadent ice cream. I’d tell you to try it, but I don’t want anyone to start any bad expensive habits because of me.

In most people’s mind, tea just can be drank, so when they heard that tea leaves also can be ate, this is may a big surprise to them. According to Chinese people’s habit, many people usually drink tea instead of eating tea leaves.

However, tea do can be used to make moon cake or dessert. Meanwhile, in Hangzhou, there is a delicious dish, which made by Longjing tea and shrimp, the tea leaves can be ate with the shrimp. In Japan, a tea named matcha, also can be ate.

Some materials said that the nutrition of the tea contains two parts, soluble and insoluble components, we can completely absorb it through eating tea leaves. If we just drink tea, we can only get the soluble components that contains in the tea. On the other hand, eating tea leaves also has its disadvantage, tea maybe contain pesticide and heavy metals, these element are very harmful to human’s body health, duo to they are hardly dissolve in the water, so if we eat, more harmful ingredient will be absorbed, so when you prepared to eat tea leaves, you must be cautious.

I started eating steeped green and oolong tea leaves about two weeks ago and noticed the significant drop in my weight. It’s not the best thing in the world to be eating, but I’ve been looking to push my weight loss a little bit more (had great success with this just by drinking tea like water throughout the day).

It’s not the leaves really, but I am guilty of picking out fruit, chocolate, mystery lumps and eating them! Sometimes burning my fingers trying to dig them out of my steeper.

It seems I am in the minority here, but eating anything that I’ve steeped sounds yucky to me. Even the dry stuff doesn’t look appealing to eat most of the time. Occasionally I consider stealing a bit of dried fruit before I steep, but never after. Blech. : )