Green tea over rice is a comforting food made of steamed rice and rich green tea. The dish originates from Japan, and is widely popular for its countless health benefits. This isn’t surprising, especially since green tea is known to contain healthy bioactive compounds. The National Institutes of Health's feature on green tea explains that the drink and its components, including epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), are good for improving mental alertness, relieving digestive symptoms and headaches, promoting weight loss, and protecting against heart disease and cancer.
Best of all, the dish is extremely easy to make at home. All the ingredients include the usual staples from a Japanese pantry, making the dish best for when you're feeling under the weather, when there are no other ingredients to cook with, or simply when you're craving a light and nutritious dish.
Without further ado, here are the simple steps to making green tea over rice.
Prepare your ingredients
At its core, green tea over rice simply consists of steamed rice, green tea, and salt, scallions, or sesame seeds. The ingredients aren't complicated, but the dish's simplicity is exactly its charm.
In green tea over rice, the rice must be perfectly fluffy to ensure that it soaks up the delicious liquid. Most Japanese homes make use of a rice cooker for this reason, with newer Asian brands utilizing pressure technology. Preparing your rice with a Cuckoo rice cooker, one of the most popular brands available online on Amazon and in physical retail stores including Walmart, can be the fastest way to guarantee perfectly-cooked rice. The meal versatility of the CRP-P0609S model also ensures that you can cook brown rice as a substitute. Some people prefer to use brown rice for this dish because it offers more fiber and has a lower glycemic index. However, the grain requires a longer time to soak and cook. Using a pressure rice cooker gets rid of this dilemma and provides more options for your family.
Otherwise, any green tea can be used but the leaves must be perfectly steeped. Green tea has pleasing grassy and nutty flavors, but when over steeped these same flavors can taste bitter and burnt. It is best to use a tea infuser when steeping your tea. The extra fine mesh of our Paris tea infuser keeps small leaves in place yet gives larger leaves plenty of room to expand. It also fits into almost any cup or mug. This makes it easy to fill and remove when you are done steeping your tea leaves in water, guaranteeing perfectly-made green tea each time.
Optional: choose your toppings
The simplicity of the dish makes it open to a range of choices for toppings. A favorite is dried pickled plum or salted salmon filet. The former can be found ready-to-eat in Asian grocery store. The latter can be easily prepared even in a small and budget convection oven like the Hamilton Beach convection oven, which is easily found on Amazon and Walmart as well. The filet only has to be baked for 20-25 minutes at 400ºF (204ºC), until the skin and flesh are blistered and charred. Otherwise, you can also consider adding nori or seaweed, wasabi, salmon roe, or any other toppings that you’d like.
Assemble the bowl
In a large shallow bowl, place the steamed rice alongside whatever toppings you have prepared on top of the rice. Pour the green tea over the rice until it fills the bowl halfway, and serve immediately. With that, you have a perfectly comforting bowl of green tea over rice.
Did this dish surprise you? Tea can be wonderfully prepared in many different ways. If you’d like to try another meal with tea, check out our article on Soups made with Tea. Our Creamy Green Tea Soup with Spinach and Chicken recipe is delicious, and can be made with our Green Jasmine, Sencha Fukujyu, or whatever variation of green tea you’d like. When you’re ready for your next tea purchase, our catalog of loose leaf tea on The Larkin Tea Company website is available for you to choose from.
Piece written for larkintea.com
by Mirabelle Anne Wilde