Microwaving Tea Increases Its Antioxidants, but How Does It Taste?
It was bad news week and now it’s only Wednesday. Fortunately, the tea controversy is raging today. Can I cook it in the microwave? Is it better in the microwave? Australian studies say yes, while tea aficionados around the world recoil in horror.
A claim shared by ABC Radio Sydney is that you can extract slightly more antioxidants ( catechins in particular) if you put your tea in the microwave while it is brewing. Quan Wuong and his team at Newcastle University in Australia compare different methods of brewing green tea, and in a 2012 article they describe a method that gives you more good things than your usual method, but still practical. Houses. In a news article, the procedure is a bit confusing, but here is what the scientific article describes:
- Boil water and pour over a tea bag. Insist for at least 30 seconds.
- Place a cup (with a tea bag) in the microwave for one minute at half power or whatever power setting you will get 500 watts.
- When you take out the tea bag, dip it up and down ten times and then squeeze it out.
The idea is to help people get the health benefits of green tea without drinking five or more cups a day. When brewed regularly, 62 percent of the tea leaf catechins and 76 percent of the caffeine can be extracted. Increasing the power of the microwaves gives you up to 80 and 92 percent. It’s not a big difference, but it’s something.
So how does it taste? I brewed two cups of plain green tea, letting one brew for three minutes and followed the microwave protocol, which took about three minutes anyway. I dipped and squeezed both tea bags as I removed them.
They tasted almost the same, although I could taste a little more bitter and tart taste in what was cooked in the microwave. Wuong and the team write in their article that tea brewed this way can be slightly stronger, so you can use flavored green tea instead of plain tea to hide any flavors you don’t like.
One problem: I don’t like green tea. And many of the UK media reporting on this study probably agree with me on this. They are probably thinking about black tea. So, I brewed some more tea for science, this time mango and chili flavored black tea. Again, they were similar, but the tea made in the microwave was slightly more bitter and astringent. It also had more chili flavor, which was nice.
If you are fussy about how to make black tea, you probably know that steeping too long can make it bitter. In terms of taste, this method is simply a faster way to infuse for too long. Still, it’s not bad. If you are already the type of person who brews a tea bag for more than five minutes or may even use the same tea bag more than once (which my favorite trendy cafe actually recommends , so spare me the words “how dare you”) you will love it just fine.