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Date With Fig Leaf Tea

@Joe, here some fore reads...

http://natures-health-foods.com/fig-leaves.html

Interesting read thanks!

wellcome, indeed its informative...

Try taking your dried figs leaves and toasting them in a dry frying pan.
Low to medium heat, heavy pan if possible, heat the pan first, no oil, dry,
stir the dried leaves for a few minutes, a nutty smell will start to rise from the pan,
give it a few more minutes, then remove and cool.  Make your tea.

If you like rice,
take  two fresh fig leaves and float in your rice cooker. Cook rice.
Remove leaves once cooking is finished.

Might become your new favorite rice.

Can also use fig leaves to make cheese (rennet) or  ferment (pickle) vegetables.

Hi Aaron,

Do you ever use the fresh leaves?  If I have to trim some leaves off I like to make fig leaf tree.  The storage benefit of dried leaves makes sense.  Does it taste the same?

I have noticed that different varieties have different aromas and flavors as tea.  Have you noticed that too?

Joe, i never tryied the fresh leaves, I should.
You are right about each variety having a different aroma.
Dry ones would have less grassy underlying taste and more like green tea with touch of Vanila, Coconut, chamomile or Mint.
Thats my take on it so far.
After drying, I crash them like dry mint, removing all the thick veins and stalks and keep it in an airtight jar.

there it is, the final product. ;)

20140711_190857.jpg 


Yummm... What a nice topic . Thank you Aaron for sharing. Your tea set up looks so cozy and warm...We make tea from fresh leaves and it taste good too.  My youngest daughter runs outsides when we want to make that special "garden" tea and she knows what to pick already to make that nice combination : couple mulberry leaves, couple fig leaves, couple guava leaves and a few nice strands of lemon grass.  This combination can be varied depending on what flavor you enjoy more. Each of this herb has great health benefits. I love lemon grass flavor a lot :0 ) Everyone who tries this special tea in our house really enjoys it and keeps asking for seconds :)  Jujubes when dried make delicious healthy drink when simmered on low for a few minutes, they are great for heart and liver problems or just nutritious hot or cold drink.   Keep experiementing and enjoy your tea and stay healthy !

I am glad Aaron you started this topic. I did not know you can make tea out of fig leaves. I'll give it a try.

welcome Katerina, I have heard different combinations to Fig leaves....Pete had mentioned the Jujube and Lemon grass as well, sounds lovely. I want to try them all.

Pat, this is all new to me too, that's why I am promoting it, I was pleasantly surprised as I tried for the first time.

 This year I made a lot of fig leaf tea.  The drying process took over the house because it was so rainy and humid they wouldn't dry quickly.one bag of fig leaves was overlooked for 3-4 days and about 2/3 of the leaves turned dark. It didn't look or smell like mold so I dried them anyway.  The flavor was a very pleasant surprise. It made richer, fruitier, darker tea than the green leaves do, and no bitterness.  I think this is what is accomplished when they ferment tea leaves to make the black tea which has a richer flavor than green tea. I prefer it and I will try to recreate this next time I pick leaves. (leave them in a paper bag for a few days.)  Some people boil the leaves but I fill the water reservoir of my 10 C coffee maker with water, then put 1/3 C of dried fig leaves + 1/2  tsp powered green stevia leaf into the empty carafe and let the hot water fill it.  I keep it on the warm mode until it turns off in about an hour and it makes a very fruity and just slightly sweet tea.  I'm thinking you could add orange/ lemon peel, anise seeds, cinnamon etc to the leaves to steep all together.  I found If you use powdered anything (stevia leaves , cinnamon etc) it will clog a coffee filter but if you let it set awhile the leaves and sediment settles to the bottom of the pot and you can strain it through a sieve. You can make a strong concentrate too and freeze icecubes.  Use one to a glass and dilute it.  I'm keeping a pitcher of this iced tea in the fridge but heat it up for chilly times. 
 I hope some of you dry your leaves and let us know what you do with them.  
This tea is a good consolation for those of us who had a meager fig year,   If we cant eat em, we'll drink em.
                                                                                                                                                                                             [image]
PS: After grinding the leaves finer in a blender they are much more concentrated in volume than the hand crumbled leaves.  I now use only 1/2 the amount of tea leaves that I previously posted.  Looks like these measurements need to be worked out individually because the ratio of leaves to water can vary greatly according to how fine you grind the leaves.

fig tea.jpg 


fig tea2.jpg  IMG_0787.JPG


  sorry  IDK why this came out so BIG I cant shrink the pictures,    I'm a space hog  LOL

  • Tea

Well if the name isn't hint enough, I am a lover of tea. All the recipes and drying methods have me so looking forward to next fall for the leaves of my new figs AND mulberries. Now I have one more reason to obsess over my plethora of plants. <3

Quote:
Originally Posted by bullet08
here is an old korean recipe. 

a segment of fresh ginger
a stick of cinnamon
an orange peel
few chinese dates
pinch of dried fig leaf since it's on fig forum.. but back in korea, specially up in seoul, fig wasn't around. down by busan (pusan) there were some.. or so i'm told by my wife. 

bring them to simmer and keep on simmering. serve whenever you want to drink it. used to run that on top of kerosene burner/stove all winter long in korea.


Oooh, this sounds good!

I have a pitcher of iced fig leaf tea in the fridge most of the time.
After drying the leaves I put them thru a small electric grinder (for coffee beams or herbs), and store the ground leaves in plastic bags in the freezer.
I make my iced tea with a large tea bag filled with the ground fig leaves and throw in some home grown spearmint leaves (fresh in summer, dried in winter).  Sometimes I will add a single green tea bag to the brew for variety, and my wife recently got some black tea with pomegranate - a tea bag of that adds a different flavor also for variety. 

Hopefully I have enough dried fig leaves to make it thru the winter this year, most of my trees were small and I did not want to set them back too much by taking a lot of their leaves early in the summer.  We had so much rain in Sept that most got rust and I did not want to use those leaves for tea.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron4USA
there it is, the final product. ;)

20140711_190857.jpg 


Ooooh, nice. So u grind the leaves, Aaton?

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