Using Shizuoka green tea as condiment

I have lost count of how many days it has been since we started staying home due to the Covid-19 situation. As stressful as it is, the circumstances have also provided me with plenty of opportunities to expand my cooking ability and my perspective as well!

One of my discoveries came when I was looking at everything at home, trying to see what I could use to switch up the flavors in the food I cook. I got bored with using the same BBQ sauce and white miso to flavor everything. Then, I opened up my tea drawer and saw my instant caffeine-free Shizuoka green tea powder staring straight at me.

I have written a full review of this instant green tea before. The super fine powder is quick and easy to use, but the taste is on the mild side, so I have not been using it as often as I expected.

At the same time, the thought of using it as condiment came into my head!!
Since it is so fine, it wouldn’t add unnecessary texture to food. And being mild, it would bring a green tea flavor without being overwhelmingly bitter!
But, what food would it go well with…?

Since I was going to experiment with the condiment, I might as well experiment with the cooking too. So for the very first time, I took out a deep-fryer pot that I had received two years ago but never used, and I started slicing onions and carrots to make kakiage tempura!

Why tempura? I remember having matcha-infused-salt at a tempura restaurant before, and I wanted to recreate that.

The tempura was a success (since this is about the tea powder, I will skip the frying part). It tasted great with salt alone, and I was confident. Instead of mixing salt and the Shizuoka green tea powder, I decided that the salt was too grainy so it would have been better to sprinkle the tea on top instead. The first bite was… um, I couldn’t taste it.

The tea was so mild that small sprinkles were not enough, so I took a spoonful and covered the top of the tempura, and some more on the side to dip. And WOW! It was awesome!

Just as expected, the tea added some aroma and bitterness, but in a way that adds a delicious layer to the otherwise simple kakiage. I was so impressed, and both my partner and I just started putting more and more green tea powder on the kakiage tempura, as well as onto the eggplant tempura we made afterward.

We were afraid that we were “wasting” the green tea since we used quite a lot, but it was just so good that we decided we would be happy to buy more instant green tea just so that we could make drinks as well as to find ways to use them in our cooking.

So, the moral of the story is that if you have a bag of instant Shizuoka green tea at home, don’t be afraid to use them as condiments because it might really surprise you!!!

This post is supported by Shizuoka Green Tea Guide, one of City-Cost's Supporters helping City-Cost bloggers to enjoy life in Japan and engage in new experiences.