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The perfect cup of tea

I'm enjoying Martha Stewart's shows. I like her non-bombastic attitude on her (now one-time) version of The Apprentice, and I think her live Martha show in front of an audience is a hundred times more interesting and fun than the perfectly shot, edited, and set-to-Wyndham-Hill-music shows she used to produce.

(Martha isn't always live - due to her schedule, they shoot some of them in advance. You know this because some commercials have clips from the upcoming shows, with the guests on the set, and that can't happen if the show hasn't been taped yet. Listen to the announcer when the show opens - if he says "Live from New York, it's Martha," that day's show is live in New York and anywhere else that shows it at 11AM Eastern Time. If he doesn't say it, it was taped in advance.)

Yesterday, though, Martha let me down, big-time. At the end of the show, her "good thing" was "the perfect pot of tea." If you don't make tea, here's the basic idea:

  1. Boil water
  2. Pour some boiling water in the teapot, slosh it around, and pour it out (this warms the teapot)
  3. Add loose-leaf tea to the teapot
  4. Add boiling water to the teapot and let steep
  5. Add boiling water to the teacups, slosh around, and pour out to warm the cups
  6. When the tea has steeped, pour from the pot through a strainer into individual cups
  7. Serve.

Now, while my gal Martha showed all of these steps, she was horribly imprecise about it. She likes "weak tea", so she just took as much loose tea "as fits in my five fingers," as she put it. She plopped that in a pot of indeterminate size, poured in "a bunch" of water, and let it sit for "a while." Since it was live TV and she was running out of time at the end of the show, she poured after less than a minute, and filled a cup with something that looked a lot like water.

Very, very disappointing.

If you want the whole story on brewing tea, you need to watch True Brew II, the 4th season episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown explains everything. In fact, according to Food Network, that show is scheduled to air again in about a month, on December 15 at 7PM ET/PT.

But even AB's recipe for the Perfect Cup of Tea makes four servings, and is too much for a single guy like me most of the time. So take note, tea fans (and if you don't drink hot tea, you really should consider it this winter), here are the tools you need to create a single, hot, perfect mug of great tea.

First, realize that AB is right and Martha is not: measurement is key. You need good tea, hot water, and the right proportions. Even AB has trouble measuring tea, and uses a standard eating teaspoon and not a measuring teaspoon for his tea. As he said:

This is a [measuring] teaspoon. It's called a 'teaspoon' because it holds a teaspoon. This [utensil] is called a 'teaspoon'. Not because it holds one of these [measuring teaspoons], but because the English figured out that a vessel of this general shape and size holds just the right number of leaves to produce a proper cup of tea. Now I've spoken to a few experts who argue that this device can not compensate for leaf size and should therefore be replaced with a digital scale capable of measuring grams. Now I am all for weights and measures, but come on. Grams? I want to make tea, not TNT. I'm going to stick with this [utensil teaspoon]. It's a lot more practical.

Now what I do is one teaspoon per cup. I just scoop and whatever, uh, hangs on the spoon, hangs on the spoon.

Baloney. Get this from eTeapot.com for 22 bits. It's one of those plastic, adjustable spoons sized so that the proper amount of loose-leaf tea fits in it for the number of 6-ounce cups of tea you want to make. Even better, it has symbols for weak, regular, or strong tea. If you want four cups of weak tea, slide the indicator. One cup of strong tea? Slide the indicator. Dip the thing into your good loose-leaf tea, get it about level, dump the results into the brewing vessel, and you're done. Yes, it's a unitasker, but when I want tea, I don't want to do math in my head. I want a hot cup now. I'm willing to take the $2.50 hit and drawer space for one spoon to make that work. (Besides, loose-leaf tea is also a unitasker - I don't use it for anything but brewing tea.)

Second, while you're at eTeapot.com, order one of these. Now, as they seem to have few of them left. I'm ordering some myself, so you'll have to take what's left. These mugs are perfect for a single serving of tea. The mug holds exactly 12 ounces, and since a standard "tea cup" is 6 ounces, it is two cups in every recipe you want. It's stoneware, so it retains heat very well, and handle stays cool. The infuser is a very fine mesh, and the lid, when turned upside down, holds the infuser basket perfectly.

With this mug and the tea measure, making absolutely perfect hot tea from loose leaves is easier than brewing coffee.

  1. Boil two cups or so of water; I use an electric kettle because it's fast and easy, but the microwave works as well.
  2. Set your tea measure for two cups of tea at the strength you want (I use regular strength) and scoop out the right amount of leaves
  3. Put the tea in the infuser, and put the infuser in the mug
  4. When the water boils, pour it directly onto the tea in the infuser in the mug
  5. Put the lid on the top to hold the heat in
  6. Start a timer for the correct steeping time for your tea (for the Gold Tip Assam tea I like since I got it as a gift a few years ago, this is four minutes)
  7. When the timer goes off, take the lid off the mug and turn it upside down. Lift the infuser out by its handles and set it on the lid. Add honey while stirring, and consume.

There's no teapot or cup to "warm" because you brew and consume the tea in the mug. The infuser is perfectly sized, and the lid holds it after it's done. Just tap the used tea leaves into the trash and wash the infuser with the mug - or rinse it out and repeat on the days (like today) when you need a second mug. There's nothing but the mug to wash since the boiling vessel only had water in it. And with good tea, it is so wonderful.

Apologies to Martha, but this really is the perfect cup of tea. Accept no substitutes. eTeapot.com seems to have other mugs with infusers for sale besides the one I recommend, but I like the 12-ounce model because everything else tea-related assumes 6-ounce cups. Either way, if you're a solitary tea drinker, get this stuff and use it.

It's a good thing.

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