Ingredients · Other
Toasted Rice
Oryza sativa · Poaceae (grass family)
What it’s like, and how to use it
- 185°F / 85°C
- 1 to 2 minutes, with green tea
How to use it
Steeped with green tea. Hotter water than plain sencha — around 185°F — because the rice needs it, and the tea is forgiving enough to take it. Good with a meal rather than alone.
With food
Rice and sushi. Grilled fish. Miso. Pickles. Sesame. Nori. Anything savoury.
With spices
Sesame. Shichimi togarashi, at the table. Ginger.
With tea
Sencha and bancha, which is what it is blended with. Hojicha.
Its story
Where it comes from
Japanese genmaicha uses roasted brown rice; a proportion of the grains pop in the roasting, which is where the popcorn in the bag comes from. Our lot names no origin.
What happened
Genmaicha was people's tea. Shaded tea was restricted to the upper classes and commoners drank bancha; adding roasted rice stretched the leaf further and made it cheaper still, and it was also drunk by people fasting for religious reasons. There is a macabre folk story attached to the name — a fifteenth-century samurai council, a servant called Genmai from whose sleeve rice fell into his master's tea, and a killing the samurai regretted once he tasted it — but it is a Tier 3 legend and best told lightly or not at all. What is true is simpler: a poor man's economy became one of the most loved teas in Japan.
On the shelf with it
Every product it goes into.
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Genmaicha, Organic
Regular price From $9.00 CADRegular price -
Plum Sesame "NEW"
Regular price From $10.00 CADRegular price
