Genmaicha

Genmaicha

What it is

The likeliest account puts it in a Kyoto tea shop in the 1920s, where the broken remains of kagami mochi — the New Year rice cakes — were roasted instead of thrown out and blended into cheap bancha. The rice was there to make the tea go further; the toasted-grain smell everyone now buys it for was an accident of thrift.

In the kitchen

Brew it at 90 °C — near boiling, unlike any other Japanese green — for thirty seconds, or the rice tastes raw. It also works as a savoury liquid: infuse it strong and use it for half the dashi in a clear broth.

Goes with

Rice Chestnut Sesame Button mushroom Cream Salmon

Same species

Assam tea Ceylon tea Da Hong Pao Darjeeling tea Earl Grey Gunpowder green tea

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