Japanese Matcha Tea

Most people have now become familiar with green tea and its medicinal values – another form of green tea is the Japanese matcha tea. This is a green tea powder is manufactured from the leaves of tea which are grown, not in sunlight and then steamed at not a very high temperature. The idea behind this is to retain as much antioxidants as possible and to prevent fermentation from taking place. The manner of this steaming also assists in retaining the chlorophyll color and this causes these tea leaves to still look green which is so characteristic of this type of tea.

Japanese matcha tea can be used in a lot of green tea based drinks and can be mixed with different types of recipes. This tea is also quite tasty and of course healthy, so there are quite a lot of people who drink this green tea alternatively.

One needs to keep in mind that this type of green tea is actually healthier than the normal type of green tea since here we are consuming the entire green tea leaves as against only the liquid which is extracted from green tea leaves, in conventional green tea. Researchers have discovered that the antioxidants found in Japanese matcha tea are much higher than found in blueberries and chocolates which also have a lot of antioxidants.

Apart from more antioxidants found in Japanese matcha tea, it also has high chlorophyll content and this only adds to its health properties. Among all green tea drinks, Japanese matcha tea is easily the most nutritional type of green tea. Japanese matcha tea also plays a very important role in the Japanese tea ceremony which goes by the name of Chanoyu.

The other advantage of Japanese matcha tea is the different way in which you can use it for various dishes – for instance, green tea ice-cream is very delicious – here, green tea powder is used as one of the ingredients. You could make your own green tea ice-cream by mixing green tea powder with vanilla ice-cream which is soft and then allowing this concoction to freeze again. Green tea can also be used to make delicious green lattes and also various desserts such as cakes, curds, milkshakes and puddings. Not only this, but green tea can also be mixed with soups and stews so really, green teas can be put to many different uses. No doubt, Japanese matcha tea is a little more expensive than conventional green tea.