Why don't we cook with tea?

Perhaps because the flavor of liquid teas is not as strong as coffee. There is, however, tea smoked chicken

There are actually tons of recipes that utilize tea (tea leaves steeped in water), but not so many where you just throw the tea leaves in with the food. I’ve actually found very few recipes where people use coffee beans or grounds instead of coffee (coffee grounds steeped in water). Plus, tea isn’t as big in general in the US – coffee is the real giant here.

I actually read something about this a while back. Tea was not traditionally used for cooking in European and, especially, Western countries before the 19th century as it was too expensive. However, the Chinese have cooked with tea for hundreds of years. In the 19th century, the price of tea (I think Indian tea) went down and many cooks began to use it ..but it wasn’t favoured enough to stay.

I need to find that article now. Edit: Here’s something similar to what I read.

I’ve never read of using tea as a recipe in Indian, Thai or Chinese cooking. I believe they tend to drink tea.

If you do a google search, there are lots of recipes using tea in its liquid form. There are some using tea leaves too. No idea how they taste though. Link

I make earl grey tea scones myself. They usually have blackberries & earl grey in the batter, and are garnished with a single large mint leaf on top of each scone with an almond pieced through their center. It’s one of my signature baked goods.

Tea loaf is a kind of fruit cake where the raisins etc are soaked in tea. Yum.

We have a lot of green tea flavoured stuff over here in Asia.
Green tea ice-cream, green tea cake, etc, etc.

The tea company Celestial Seasonings has published a book with over a hundred recipes for cooking with tea.

There are other books on the subject as well. Amazon has a bunch of them listed.

Another vote for tea loaf. Lovely stuff, especially with a nice cup of tea

As I know there’s no cuisine that actually uses tea as a common spice. It seems weird because somebody somewhere uses just about every plant to cook with that isn’t poisonous

I’ve eaten tea flavored cookies.

When I first moved to China, there was a dish that was called tea leaf beef. It was stir fried tea leaves with small bits of beef and sesame seeds. It was delightful, and the only restaurant I knew to serve it closed down sometime between when I moved from my first city and returned for a visit.

I think if you stir fried beef and tie guan yin dried tea leaves to a slight crisp and put in some sesame you could recreate the dish.

Oh…and I’m currently eating green tea potato chips MMM VERY TASTY

@everephebe Mmmm, scones and Earl Grey tea in one? I’m there!

My favorite ice cream is Green Tea and I’ve had a baked noodle dessert where the noodles were first cooked in black tea then mixed with butter, crushed nuts, honey and raisins.

I smoked trout over tea leaves. It was wonderful. And isn’t there a Thai salad that includes tea leaves among nuts and seeds? It’s true that tea isn’t used as much as it might be, but it definitely exists in some Asian cuisines.

Oh yes, we have a dish called ‘tea-leaf eggs’ (茶葉蛋） that involve boiling an egg in tea. Or do we boil the egg first, crack the shell, and steep in tea? I forgot. Anyway, very yummy!

So I tried an experiment. Made banana bread with tea.. Used a heaping tablespoon of ground tea. It turned out very well, although it wasn’t possible to identify the tea flavor. I’ll have to try it again.