Healthy Tea --- Lei Cha

Lei cha or Grinding or ground tea is a traditional Hakka tea-based beverage or gruel. Lei cha is very traditional among Hakkas in Mainland China, especially Southern China.Grinding tea is popular in Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces;It is also popular in Taiwan, Malaysia, and any locales with a substantial Hakka diaspora population. The custom began in the Three Kingdoms period.Being a kind of ancient tea custom, it has not only become people’s daily drink, but also an important greeting and friendship ceremony.

It is not the same as Chinese tea because there are always other ingredients. Pounded tea consists of a mix of tea leaves and herbs that are ground or pounded together with various roasted nuts, seeds, grains, and flavorings. 

It is a mixture of tea, sesame, peanuts, herbs and other ingredients, into the grind bowl, bowl with a grind bar in the Challenge in the fast rotating grinding, tea and other raw materials to research into a powder or paste, into the boiling water for drinking. Because the tool is mainly grind bowl, so called Leicha.

Pounded tea is a varying mix of:
tea leaves – any type of tea leaf can be used, but the most popular and common are either Green tea or Oolong; for ease of use, sometimes matcha (finely milled green tea) is used

roasted nuts and seeds – the most commonly used are peanuts, mung beans, and sesame; other examples include soybeans, pinenuts, Pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, Lentils, lotus seeds

roasted grains – examples: cooked or puffed rice, wheat

herbs and flavorings – examples: ginger, salt

Chinese herbal medicine may be included for health purposes

The ingredients are ground in a food processor, or with a mortar and pestle, or in a large earthenware basin with a wooden stick. The mix should be reduced to a powder that resembles fine cornmeal.
The powder is then placed into a serving bowl and hot water is stirred into it such that a thin soup-like beverage is produced.

The tea is drunk for breakfast or on cold winters as a tasty and healthy restorative.Lei cha may also be taken as a dietary brew. In that case, it is served with rice and other vegetarian side dishes such as greens, tofu, and pickled radish.Traditionally, Lei cha is a savory brew; however, in contemporary interpretations it is often consumed as a sweet drink.

Leicha is usually only as a general beverage. Consider Leicha medicinal value, can be added, such as Egeria money, leaves, small repens, class bamboo dishes, yellow, mint and other herbs, there are expelling wind cold, refreshing air, clear fire detoxification effect.

Leicha in southern China more than a distribution, but different production methods, in particular the choice of ingredients vary greatly. Northwestern Fujian folk Leicha is the right amount of sesame tea and put a special pottery in research sticks with tea, add boiling water into a go-between made. Inland in Guangdong, Jieyang, Puning, and other places inhabited by the Hakka Hakka Leicha by the drink is to put teeth tea bowl grind into powder, coupled with mashed cooked peanuts, sesame seeds, together with a little salt and coriander, made with boiled water. Hunan’s paradise with a drink of a special customs Qinren Leicha. Qinren Leicha is to tea, ginger, hawthorn wood raw rice into the grinding bowl and grind broken, and then washed in boiling water for drinking. If we can recapture point sesame, Xi Yan into the taste even more delicious fragrance.