This spicy yoga tea is a recipe I started making after doing my yoga teacher training a few years ago. It's delicious and ultra healthy, packed with good stuff like ginger, turmeric, and cardamom. The tea can help to reduce bloating and inflammation and tastes great, too.
Course Drinks
Cuisine Vegan
Prep Time 5 minutesminutes
Cook Time 30 minutesminutes
Total Time 35 minutesminutes
Servings 1large pot
Ingredients
1litre water
10cmpiece fresh ginger
4cmpiece fresh turmeric*
1cinnamon stick
5cardamom podsouter shell removed
5whole peppercorns
After cooking: Juice of two lemons and 1 tablespoon raw honeyor 1/2 cup apple juice
Instructions
Add the water to a pot. Roughly chop the ginger and turmeric. Don't worry about peeling them if they're organic, but peel them if they're not. Add the cinnamon stick, cardamom, and peppercorns. Bring this to a boil, then reduce the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes to an hour.
Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and honey or the apple juice, depending on your preference. Serve hot. You can drink this continuously throughout the day, but one cup every day will help reduce bloating and inflammation.
The tea is best served hot but you can also drink it cold. It will keep on the stove without the additions (lemon or apple juice) for a couple of days. You can keep adding water to the same spices and repeat the process up to five times, as long as they stay covered with water in between cooking (only let it sit for a day without cooking, though). After about a week the spices lose their strength. The tea with lemon or apple juice will keep in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed container.
Notes
• To get the most benefits from turmeric, it should always be combined with pepper. All of the spices in this tea are great for reducing inflammation, but turmeric is an anti-inflammatory powerhouse. • Both ginger and turmeric can help with inflammatory disorders like rheumatoid arthritis when used over time, but can also cause blood thinning, so discuss this with your doctor if you take blood thinners or if you're pregnant. • Too much turmeric can upset your stomach, but the amount in this tea is unlikely to have that side effect. You should have a happier stomach thanks to the ginger, but if you do find that it bothers your stomach, don't drink it. • You can alter the recipe to increase or decrease certain ingredients if you like it to have a more pronounced cinnamon flavour, for example. Other additions could be cloves, star anise, or fennel, but I don't like them so I don't include them. * If you can't find fresh turmeric, you can either substitute a small amount of dried (1/4-1/2 teaspoon) or leave it out. Fresh turmeric is getting easier to find these days, though, and I can't recommend trying it highly enough.