Homemade Christmas Tea with Orange and Spices

Name: Homemade Christmas Tea with Orange and Spices
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 150 min
Total time: 170 min
Yield: 40 servings
Cuisine: Argentine
Ingredients: 200 g loose black tea (Ceylon or Assam, medium leaf); The peel of 3 oranges; 4 cinnamon sticks; 2 tbsp whole cloves; 2 tbsp green cardamom pods; 2 star anise; Optional: 1 split vanilla pod; Optional: 2 tbsp toasted flaked almonds; To serve: honey or sugar and a fresh slice of orange

⏱ 2 h 50 min in total🔪 20 min prep🍳 2 h 30 min cooking🍽 40 portiesEasy

Black tea with orange peel, cinnamon, clove and cardamom — blended at home it tastes fresher than the tin, you set the ratio yourself and it costs a fraction. With the two things that decide the outcome.

🔎 What is christmas spice mix? — where it comes from, what goes in it and how it differs.

Ingredients

Measurements

🍽 40 servings

200 g loose black tea (Ceylon or Assam, medium leaf)
The peel of 3 oranges
4 cinnamon sticks
2 tbsp whole cloves
2 tbsp green cardamom pods
2 star anise
Optional: 1 split vanilla pod
Optional: 2 tbsp toasted flaked almonds
To serve: honey or sugar and a fresh slice of orange

Method

1
Peel the oranges with a vegetable peeler in wide, shallow strips. The critical part is taking none of the white pith: that is what brings bitterness, and it is precisely what you never taste in the tin.
2
If some pith comes away anyway, scrape it off with a knife, laying the strip flat on the board.
3
Lay the strips side by side on a lined tray, not overlapping.
4
Dry at 80-90 °C for 2 to 2 and a half hours with the oven door slightly ajar —a wooden spoon in the gap will do— so the moisture escapes. They are ready when they snap rather than bend.
5
Cool completely. Storing peel while it is still warm will spoil the whole blend within days from the residual moisture.
6
Cut the dried strips into 1 cm pieces and break the cinnamon sticks into similar-sized pieces.
7
Mix the tea with the peel, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and star anise. The ratio matters: the tea has to be four-fifths of the blend. Any more spice and it stops being tea and becomes a spice infusion with tea in it.
8
Store in a tin or airtight jar, away from light. Usable straight away, though the flavour is rounder after a week.
9
To brew: 1 heaped teaspoon per cup, water at 95 °C —not boiling— and steep for 3 to 4 minutes. Not a minute longer: clove keeps releasing and by 5 minutes the cup turns harsh.
10
Serve with honey and a fresh slice of orange. It takes milk well, if that is how you like it.