Moroccan Mint Tea
Mint tea is a complete staple here in Morocco. We learned so much about it from Najle during our cooking class, but also from servers at restaurants and our Berber guide when we went out to the Atlas Mountains. It is something that takes a lot of time to prepare and is drunk at least five times a day by most Moroccans.
We spent about half an hour at the beginning of our cooking day learning how to prepare the tea, which is quite the process! We started by seeing the gunpowder green tea leaves from China, which are rolled up in a tight little ball. They are cleaned on the outside, but inside they are still dirty.
The first step is cleaning the green tea leaves. To do that, she scooped the tea leaves into the pot and filled the pot with boiling water until it was about half full. Enough to let the leaves steep to soften and open up over a few minutes. She poured out the water into a cup, which she set aside to use for later. That tea was clean and fine to drink, as it was in contact with the clean, outer section of the leaves.
The second step was pouring new boiling water into the pot until it was about half full. She swirled it around, getting all the dirt off the leaves as a result. She then poured this into a second cup. She put the two cups next to each other, and it was remarkable! The first cup she had poured was clean and indeed looked like a cup of tea, while the second cup was disgusting looking. She also pulled some of the green tea leaves out so we could look at and compare side by side the dry, curled-up tea leaves to the soaked and washed tea leaves. We got to look, touch, and smell the difference.
The next step was to pour the first cup back into the pot since it was full of good and clean green tea. Then she topped up the teapot with boiling water. The teapot went back to the kitchen and onto the fire for five more minutes to get the green tea nice and steeped and flavourful. We had wondered why all the teapots here are metal, but it makes sense now that we know they put the teapots right onto the fire as part of their tea-making process!
After the tea was done on the fire, she brought it back into the room and added fresh herbs. This included mint, lemon verbena, sage, marjoram, and one other I can’t quite recall. We have noticed that mint is hands down the most popular herb used in most Moroccan teas and even when other herbs are used, mint seems to be added almost every time. Lemon verbena seems very popular, as well as a Royal or Berber blend (same blend, just different names), which includes a mix of at least a dozen herbs.
There are so many herbs used, and often the types of herbs they add will correspond to what time of day it is. Do you need herbs to promote energy? To relax and unwind before bed? Just to socialize with people during the day where taste is more important? Are you feeling unwell? Maybe an upset stomach or a headache? Are you feeling anxious and needing to calm your mind?
After adding your fresh or dried herbs into the pot, you pour tea from the teapot into a glass, pour the glass back into the teapot, then repeat the process again once or twice. This is to help infuse the flavour from the herbs into the tea. Next, you would add the sugar and then pour it into the cups for serving. This is quite an art, as they begin pouring low and lift the pot so you have a huge stream of tea that is typically 1-2 feet long filling up the cup. The girls LOVE this and have been practicing this here at our riad with water or tea.
Moroccan people always drink their tea with sugar. It would be unthinkable for them to drink it sugar-free! There doesn’t seem to be an exact science as to how much you add, and we have found that the tea varies significantly from place to place! Some places are very sweet, some are slightly sweetened, and some serve unsweetened with sugar on the side so that tourists like us can decide how much sugar we want to add. We prefer our tea sugar-free and have mostly been drinking it that way. But trying to live like the locals, we have tried a few times to drink it sweetened.
Sugar is so important to Moroccans, in fact, that the first and one of the most important bride gifts when you get married is a block of sugar. This is both a practical and symbolic gift to the bride. And since they have their sugar in a block, this explains why the sugar varies. They literally just carve a chunk off the block and throw it in the pot! At least, in more traditional homes. In restaurants, it’s common to see standard-sized sugar cubes or packets of loose sugar. Though how they prepare the main tea behind the scenes is anyone’s guess!
Part of why you pour the tea from high up is that it will show the person how much sugar has been added to the tea. When you pour from up high, the tea will have bubbles on the surface. The more bubbles, the more sugar in the tea. If you serve it sugar-free, you’re not going to see any bubbles on the surface. Apparently, how much sugar you add can be an indication of how much you value your guests. If you don’t value them much, you will skimp on the sugar. They will see there are not many bubbles when their tea is poured and not drink it, as it is a sign to them that the tea is no good or they are not important enough for a lot of sugar. More bubbles and sweeter tea are a sign that you are more important.
Serving tea can also be a way to have some silent communication with unwanted guests. It is proper to pour the glass ¾ full as a sign of respect. If you fill your guest’s cup to the top, you are telling them that they are not welcome in your home and to please leave. The proper response is for the person to leave their tea untouched, make their excuses, and leave the home.
Because rinsing the tea is never going to get it completely clean of debris, it is also expected that you will not finish your tea. You are to leave the bottom quarter or so in your cup, as this is where any additional debris will settle down to, leaving the tea bitter-tasting at the bottom. In reality, you end up drinking half cups of tea between filling it ¾ full and leaving almost ¼ at the bottom of the cup. And the cups are quite small, more like a large shot glass in size. So, it makes sense they can drink tea so many times in a day since they drink so little at a time!
We never knew how much nuance there was to tea here in Morocco! It was so fascinating to us to learn all about the process of making it, the types of herbs they would use at different times of the day, the social nuances behind it, etc. We promise that if you’re reading this post right now, you’re important enough to us that we will only ever fill your cup ¾ full!