Finally finished off my box of this. Now, I didn’t actually use this up in any traditional sense… I actually don’t really like jasmine green tea, because the aroma from the scenting process is typically so strong and perfumey that it irritates my head. The sorts of jasmine teas I like to drink are typically when light jasmine is added with other flavors. What I use this tea for is flavoring white rice, because I can’t put soy sauce on my rice since it is a migraine trigger. So I add the teabags to the water that gets “soaked up” by my Minute Rice to add flavor to the rice (ginger is one of my other favorites, especially when I’m having a “bad GI” day).
So I can’t judge this tea on the merits of if it is a “good” cup of jasmine tea, but for my purposes of making decent jasmine rice, it has served me well. I have certainly had to experiment a bit to find the proportions to get a good batch, since I’ve definitely botched a few batches along the way (a good cook I am not). Mostly it was a) finding the right amount of teabags to get the jasmine flavor to come through in the rice decently and b) getting the right amount of water to account for the fact that the teabags are going to soak up a bit of the water, so using the ratios on the rice box don’t work so well. I always use the “2 serving” directions (one cup water/one cup rice) and find four teabags with 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup water is the sweet spot. Times when I tried to use more teabags than that, or only the one cup of water, my rice tended to be far too dry.
I really like that using the teabags to flavor the rice gives it that nice floral flavor, but the aroma that normally is really strong, wafting, and like old grandma perfume from the cup is completely gone from the rice. Since I make this quite often I should probably look for a cheap jasmine green looseleaf that I can bag myself that will last a while, but for now at least this is easy for me to restock at the local grocery.
Flavors: Floral
