Friday, August 19, 2011

Sweet Ginger Lemon Tea

I love herbal teas. I really enjoy trying different spices and combining them into tea. You can do so many things with mint, anise, ginger, vanilla bean, lime rind, lemon rind, orange rind you name it.

Recently, I ended up with extra ginger after working on my Oh Baby, Baby Carrot Ginger Soup so I decided to make a simple herbal tea. It was a breeze and using simple syrup made it even easier.

Simple syrup is a combination of water and sugar. The idea is to dissolve the sugar into the water by cooking it so you have an easy sweetener handy without the bother of trying to dissolve the sugar later. This is a special blessing when serving cold drinks like iced tea or lemonade. 





Sweet Ginger Lemon Tea

1/4 cup chopped ginger root

2 cups of water

2 to 3 long strips of lemon rind

Simple syrup to taste. (Recipe follows below.)


Chop up the ginger.


In a sauce pan pour the water and add the chopped ginger root.


Add the lemon rind to the mixture.


Bring the tea to a boil, cover and let it simmer over low heat for about five minutes. 



Pour the herbal infusion through a sieve. Add simple syrup to taste.



Simple Syrup

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

This combination of water and sugar make for a very sweet simple syrup. If you want to make it lighter, you can use 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of water.


For sugar, I use organic pure cane sugar which has a slightly brownish tinge. When this sugar dissolves into the water, it will have a slightly brownish color. This will affect the appearance of any drink in which you pour it, but I think the taste is wonderful. So the color issue does not affect me. 


Bring the water to a boil and add the sugar, stirring constantly until it is totally dissolved. You will know it is dissolved when you bring a metal spoon to the liquid and you do not see any crystals. You do not want to let the syrup cook for too long or it will become too thick. Let the syrup cool, transfer to a bottle, and refrigerate. It's good in the fridge for about a week. 


There's no one whose company I more enjoy than my dogs when sipping a cup of tea. Winslow was on the bed sleeping, but Kip decided to join me by sitting outside after the tea was brewed. It was already getting dark. It was that time, right before nightfall, when you get to see so many little creatures coming out to work avoiding the heat of the day.


On our avocado tree was a spider that was busy making a web. While I drank my tea, Kip and I sat and watched it weave. I got this shot of it busy at work with my camera. It was a fun night. Nothing like hanging out with your dogs, a cup of tea, and watching a spider spin its web at dusk.

4 comments:

  1. not to get off the lemon theme, but do you have an ideas about pork roast. I just wrecked one the other night!

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  2. What a great idea! I just purchased some organic ginger root and will have to try this. Thanks...

    Blessings,
    Dianne
    www.mysouthernheart.com

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  3. I love Ginger tea with lemon as well. I also add a little amount of honey to make it even tastier. Honey is known for its antiseptic and antimicrobial property which makes the tea an effective flu remedy.

    Flu Remedies

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