My Persian tea traditions
If you follow me on instatgram, you’ll notice that I mostly share my gongfu style brewing sessions but that isn’t the only tea in my life! I share about that most often because it is newer to me and I am still finding out so much about tea through that style of brewing. I also want to share so that more people will try it! Please note that Persian tea culture encompass many different traditions and I am just sharing what my family practiced, it is not the end all be all.
Many people ask me when I started drinking tea and the answer is young. I don’t remember exactly what age but it was definitely in the 5-7 range. Most mornings we would eat noon-paneer (sheep milk cheese bread and walnuts) and sweet tea! This isn’t exactly sweet tea like in the south. The way the tea is brewed is very strong so we often would drink tea with a little sugar. The way I have shared before was with a sugar cube that you place in your mouth and keep there so as you drink, each sip is sweetened. I’m going to share some other ways we sweetened our tea too!
Let’s get down to the tea first. In my household and most Persian households, you will find black tea as the staple. While the type can vary, I feel like most of my family drinks exclusively ceylon. Below is a photo of the tea that I drink every morning. It’s from quality tea co and it’s called “best tea” which I personally find very fitting. As you can see it’s a loos leaf ceylon and compared to some ceylon that is a bit more broken up, this has relatively longer leaves. I do notice that the size of the leaf varies between sizes of packages I buy.
This tea is tossed with bergamot oil. You’re probably thinking, oh so it’s an earl grey. Not quite. I’m not sure the difference because I’ve had other ceylon earl greys and they just do not compare to this. The aroma is so lovely and reminds me of my childhood and grounds me every single morning.
I brew this plain with a little honey because it’s the only tea I like sweetened, I think out of habit but there are times that other ingredients are put into the tea!
Rose and rosewater are common ingredients in Iranian food and sweets. I have had this tea prepared with rose and rosewater. While I love rosewater in sweets, I prefer the whole rosebuds. I often see tea companies that have “persian rose” type tea blends use rose buds as well. I throw a few rosebuds in sometimes when I brew. Growing up, we rarely had this type of tea at our house because my parents liked it more plain but some of my relatives would brew it this way when we would visit. A visit to my relatives consisted of walking through the door, tea would be ready or almost ready and everyone would grab a cup and sit down to talk.
One other way that I did have it sometimes but it was rare was with saffron. Saffron is another common ingredient in both sweets and our dishes. I for example use saffron every day when I cook. Sometimes you will see this tea with saffron threads brewed in it. It seems that some Persian/Iranian restaurants you go to serve tea this way to share a more unique experience.
Now onto the brewing. Iran wasn’t always a tea drinking country. They were actually majority coffee drinkers until the 15th century so it’s no surprise that we like our tea STRONG. Most Persian households will have a ghouri or samovar. I do not have one only due to space, once I have more space I will be getting one first thing! If you’ve never seen one, it’s basically a double decker set up with the bottom being the water kettle and the top being the tea pot. See a simple example below.
If you look back to more historical ones, they are very decorative. You can find some like that nowadays, we have a few that my family was able to bring from Iran. Many modern ones are free standing and plug in instead of using the stove.
Essentially how this works is that you boil the water in the bottom kettle then you pour the boiling water with tea in the top one. Then you put both back on the stove and let it brew until it’s super strong! While I do enjoy tea this way, it definitely doesn’t follow brewing instructions and is probably burning the tea some :D
The other thing to know when serving tea is “kam rang” and “Poor rang” which is basically like lighter or darker tea. As a kid, one of your tasks is to learn to make and serve tea to your family! I’ve shared before that my mom had a loving nickname for me “kolfat chai” which is like tea butler LOL. So since the stronger tea is in the top and you have water in the bottom, someone who wants a weaker tea you might pour half brewed tea half water and change it up for a stronger tea. Many people just like to have a cup full of the top kettle. This double feature also allows you to keep the tea hot or reheat easily.
The other usual way we enjoyed tea growing up was in small glasses. These are Turkish glasses that my sister brought home for me on a trip but persian ones are very similar. some have handles even though they are smaller but many don’t. Generally you would have several glasses of these smaller cups. Nowadays, I drink my morning and evening tea out of glass too but they are larger and with a handle. This is out of convenience.
A lot of households would have these turkish style tea cups as well as Persian ones. One style that I often saw growing up and I recently ordered myself are cups that feature Shah Abbas or Abbas the Great who was considered one of the greatest rulers in Persian history.
The first sweetener I wanted to share with you is “ab nabat” which I believe is what you call rock candy in English. The rock candy we had wasn’t artificially colored and usually wasn’t on a stick. It was either normal colored or tinted slightly because it was infused with saffron. This one pictured is held together by a string that you’ll find once it melts. Ab nabat was my parents cure all for stomach aches. They would put it in either tea or hot water and it always worked! It was also one of my favorite ways to sweeten my tea when I was younger if we had it.
This other method may be somewhat strange but it’s actually great, raisins! Instead of darker raisins, we use green ones and they were always a bit dryer and longer. These are a little tart but also very sweet and having them alongside your tea sweeten it up! These were often used as the”healthier” version to the sugar cubes or ab nabat.
Which would you choose? Rock candy or raisins?
If you’re interested in checking out some options, I created a list that has some options. Please note that if you purchase any of these items through my link, I will earn a small comission at no extra cost to you.
