Enhancing your tea by roasting - How to roast hojicha -

“The way to make you happy in 5 minutes”  On a TV program on NHK, they introduced how to make hojicha with such catch phrase.  Hojicha is tea made by roasting sencha or kukicha.  You can buy it from tea shops but you can actually make one at home by roasting your sencha.  I tried what I’ve learned from the TV program.  Did I get happy?  Please see what happened.

What you need:

Iron frying pan  (If you don’t have one, you can use a stainless pot.)

Green tea leaf: 15g  (Casual grade sencha 400yen/100g will be fine)

Tips:

First, slowly at low heat

For the finish, rapidly at high heat

1. Pre-heat frying pan for 30 seconds at high heat

2. Place the pan on a damp cloth for 2 seconds to cool it down a little bit

This makes the pan even in temperature.  About 100gC/212F is the ideal temperature.

3. Place the green tea leaves by spreading into the pan

By placing tea into the pot, colorful green-tea aroma rises

4. Put the lid on and leave it for 2 and half minutes.

No fire, residual heat will do.

5. Open the lid

The leaves are still green.  I could smell rich fragrance already.  It has a green grass note and there seem to be some other aromas behind it.  I wanted to check them if I can find the various scent like mint, rock salt, flower, chocolate or orange.  But I didn’t have such time because I had to proceed to the next step before it will be over cooked.

6. Roast the leaves at high heat for 1 minute while stirring them.

I noticed that the odor was rapidly and continuously changing from one to another since I started roasting.  The green note became a roasted nutty aroma and then sweet smell. In 20 seconds, it already started smoking.  I guess that my stove was too strong.  I didn’t know what to do.  So, I just turned down the heat to medium and kept this processes for one minute.

7. When smoke starts to rise, put off the fire.

Keep roasting it with the remaining heat for another minute.

At this point, the odor was definitely different from the beginning.  I can acutely find the smoky aromas like cigar and cinnamon which were mentioned on the TV program.

Here is the pictures for before (top) and after (below) smoking.

Some leaves have a nice brownish color, but some small pieces are blackish.  I guess the heat was too strong on the 6^th step, so small pieces got over cooked and  burned.  Besides that, it went pretty well.    I could not find all the smell that was mentioned on TV, but I experienced the fresh greenish fragrance changing into various roasted odor like nuts (hazelnuts??) and chocolate like sweet ones.  In the end smoky odor was added which is like cigar and cinnamon.  I had the nice woody smell not only in the kitchen but also in the living room and other rooms.  I asked myself if I’m happy now.  I was not sure if I was happy but I definitely felt good.  I loved the aroma of hojicha and was satisfied with the result.  The idea on the TV, “Aroma of hojicha makes you happy” or “The way to make you happy in 5 minutes” may not be totally wrong. 

There was another advantage!  I used old sencha for making this hojicha, which I didn’t like and didn’t consume much.  It has been kept for a long time at home.  But once it was turned into hojicha, it re-lived.  I prepared the hojicha and tasted it.  
Hojicha: 1.5grams

Boiling water: 80ml (2.8oz)

Brewing time: 1 minute

It was quite good!!  I couldn’t believe that it was my least favorite tea.  It is very smooth with a caramelic sweet flavor which is like a mild black tea without bitterness.  Every time I move the cup, the alluring earthy aroma was pervaded and pleased me.  After drinking, the faint aroma remained around me and my senses were surrounded with the delight for a while.  

Give it a try with your old senecha!  Now as I’m writing this article, I’m drinking hojicha with sugar and milk.  Now, I’m happy!