Brandon’s Green Tea Rosemary Lemonade

This recipe is part of my friend Brandon’s contribution to Foodie Friend Friday. For the rest of his menu, check out the following posts:

• Introduction and Green Tea Teriyaki Chicken
• Green Tea Rice

Green Tea Rosemary Lemonade

Below is the third of what has ended up being a three-part contribution on cooking with green tea!

Being a bit of a tea connoisseur (but by no means as obsessed as Lara!), I love to find ways to incorporate tea into my every day cooking. Although green tea is a gentle tea, I highly recommend allowing your tea to steep longer than you normally would to ensure that its flavour comes through in the sauce and the chicken. The stronger the tea, the better for these recipes!

For my themed recipes I used a combination of sencha, jasmine, and/or matcha green teas but almost any green tea will do!

4 lemons, juiced (approximately 1 cup fresh lemon juice)
1 tsp lemon zest
8 cups water
4-6 bags of jasmine green tea
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
1/2-1 cup sugar (to taste)

Your ingredients.

1. Bring 8 cups of water to a boil and add tea bags. Allow the tea to steep for up to five minutes.

2. Halve the lemons and juice them until you have 1 cup of lemon juice.

3. In a jug or a pitcher, add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

4. Place the lemonade in your refrigerator and chill.

5. Remove rosemary sprigs and serve ice cold!