Straining Off Green Tea for Soup

Green tea chicken noodle soup is an American take on a common Chinese practice of using tea as the broth in non-cream based soups, see our Smoked Mushroom Soup recipe as another example of this. The recipe below is easily modified to be vegetarian by substituting the chicken with smoked tofu. It’s a fun recipe to play with as you can adjust the presence of the green tea taste both with the broth to tea ratios and the flavor of the chicken. Not to mention, this recipe takes very little time to make so long as you have precooked chicken.

Green Tea Chicken Noodle Soup

Yields 4-5 servings

1 1/2 tablespoons of your favorite straight green tea (Sencha, Gunpowder, Vietnamese Green)

4 cups of water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion

1 medium sized carrot

2 stalks of celery

2 cloves of garlic

2 cups of vegetable broth

2 cups of cubed chicken (already cooked) or smoked tofu

4oz of egg noodles

1 tablespoon of dried oregano

1 tablespoon of dried basil

Salt to taste

Directions

Dice the onion, carrot and celery (you will need to cut the stalks of celery in half length wise to get a size similar to the carrots. These should be bite sized pieces. Heat up the olive oil in a large stock pot and add the onion, carrot and celery. Allow to cook until onions are translucent. Try not to allow the vegetables to brown, so watch the temperature of the oil and stir periodically. In a separate pot or kettle, bring the water up to 185 degrees, or allow to boil and then pour into a ceramic or glass container and allow to cool for 2-3 minutes. Add the tea and allow to steep for 4 minutes. While the tea is steeping, finely dice the garlic. Give or take the speed of your kettle, your tea should be ready to strain off about the time the onions are translucent so you can pour the tea through a strainer into the stock pot and then add the vegetable broth. Then add the garlic, oregano, and basil. Allow the liquid to come up to a boil and then add the chicken and noodles. It will take the noodles about 8 minutes to become soft. At this point, taste the soup and add salt to taste.

If you want to increase the green tea flavor, you can replace the vegetable broth with more green tea. You can also make green tea chicken using this marinade (link to recipe).