Last week I helped out at a Thai cooking class at The Hutong taught by my friend Sandra of Savour Asia. As we sat down to a meal of mango salad, pork laap, and red curry chicken, I realized how much I missed having lemongrass as a kitchen staple. In New York I could easily take the train to Chinatown whenever I wanted to cook with lemongrass. In Beijing, Sanyuanli market has several stalls selling the aromatic stalky grass, but is such a trek from my apartment that it doesn’t enter my cooking consciousness at a moment’s notice.
After scooping the last of my laap mu into my mouth, I decided I must must must get lemongrass that day and make iced tea. Lemongrass and ginger iced tea is my drink of choice with Thai food if I want something lighter than iced tea with condensed milk. A somewhat long trip to Sanyuanli later, I had four stalks of fresh lemongrass to take guilty whiffs of and inspire bleary yearnings for a trip to Thailand this winter.
To get the most flavor from your lemongrass, follow this tip I first learned from an ex-roommate’s pastry chef boyfriend: after removing the outer layer, bruise the white ends of your stalks with the blunt edge of a large knife, then thinly slice. (Bruising helps release the lemongrass “juices”.) To make the lemongrass syrup, boil the sliced lemongrass with some ginger, and turn off the heat and stir in sugar. Then mix the syrup with brewed tea, add ice, and you’ll have a refreshing drink to cool your mouth between bites of spicy Thai.
Oh, and the green lemongrass tops? They make great swizzle sticks.
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Thai Lemongrass and Ginger Iced Tea
Makes 4 drinks
- 3 stalks lemongrass, white parts only
- 1 small knob ginger, sliced
- 6 cups water
- 1/3 cup sugar, plus more to taste
- 2 cups brewed black tea
- With the blunt edge of a knife, bash the lemongrass stalks until lightly bruised, then thinly slice. Slice ginger knob. Add lemongrass and ginger to a medium-sized pot of water and bring water to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then turn off heat. Stir in sugar. Let liquid sit in the pot, covered, for another 20 minutes. Strain lemongrass-ginger syrup.
- In glasses,stir together one-half lemongrass-ginger syrup with one-half brewed tea. Add ice and serve.
Yum! I love ginger iced tea but never thought of including lemongrass! Will definitely be giving this one a try :D
this sounds awesome…so it really is just a simple syrup mixed with tea..but delicious none the less….thanks!!!!! oh and by the way i love this site…i am still trying to find a recipe for Shen Jien bao…sorry if its spelled wrong…
I love this refreshing drink!
Ginger in drinks – You’ll never go wrong.
Beautiful.
mmm, this looks so tasty! thanks for the recipe :)
We are able to grow our own lemongrass in pots here in San Jose. Recently, a friend who is being treated for cancer asked if we could make some tea using the leaves – apparently it has some medicinal value. So I just clipped the leaves off of our stalks, washed them and steeped them.
They worked pretty well.
Looks so refreshing!
Nate – Hmm…I didn’t know the leaves themselves had medicinal value. How long did it take for you to grow them?
I used to drink this during one of my retreats in Bali! Never knew how to make it, thanks to you! I am enlightened! ;)
this looks lovely- makes me want summer back. lemongrass just conjures up warmth, in any form.
Ana – Exactly. Which is why I don’t mind drinking this in the winter…provided I have ample heating at home. :)
Nice drinks on a hot day!
Tasty drink! I’m definitely going to try it!
I gotta try this.. sounds so refreshingly good!
May be we could try this at our Penang Food Bloggers gathering in this coming December.
Looks delicious! Perfect for a hot day, particularly with the lemongrass: Nice and tangy!
I was googling iced tea and ended up here. Wow! The wife and I gave these a try and a huge thumbs up! Now, next time let’s add a splash of booze! Thanks!
Simple said… delightful! I can’t say much more than everyone else. Just go make one…now!!
Thanks for this wonderful post. There are so many teas listed here which one can try as a departure from the traditional types of tea such as green tea or black tea.
Lemongrass has often been used as a herb in Asian cuisines. But not many knows that it also has medicinal properties – it is commonly used in Ayurvedic medicine.
Since there are many blends of green teas such as green tea with ginger or green tea with echinacea, I see no reason why there shouldn’t be a green tea with lemongrass. Its medicinal properties would only seem to add to the health giving properties of green tea.
But since ginger already has a warming effect on the body and if lemongrass also has that warming tendency, then a tea with both ginger and lemongrass is a double whammy. Good on a really cold winter’s night I would think!
Greg
I love lemongrass tea. my mother is from the carribean where they call it fever grass and they drink it to bring down fevers
I made this tea, but withheld the sugar. Then I mixed the unsweetened tea with equal part sugar, brought to a boil to dissolve the sugar and cut the heat. This is essentially simple sugar syrup. I used 1 part of this simple sugar with 1 part lime juice and 2 parts batavia arak or dark rum to make an “Indonesian daiquiri” as a kick off to a Southeast Asian dinner party. These daiquiris were a huge hit!