When making a hojicha latte at home, decide what ingredient to use before deciding how many grams of tea you need. Dissolving instant tea in hot water and infusing tea in milk involve different work in the kitchen.
Compare Ito En’s recipe with the Kaga bōcha recipe introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, looking at ingredients and equipment. The two methods make it easier to see what you can make today.
Dissolve the instant tea, then add milk
Ito En’s recipe specifies its Sarasara Tokeru Oi Ocha Hojicha instant tea. For one serving, it uses 1 tablespoon of the product, 30 cc of hot water and 140 cc of milk. Put the product and hot water in a cup, dissolve it, then add warmed milk.
Here, the hot water dissolves the specified product; it is not used to infuse leaves that will then be strained out. Read dissolving the powder and warming the milk as separate steps, and the order of preparation becomes clear.
Put Kaga bōcha into the pan with the milk
The milk-tea recipe introduced by the ministry puts 3 tablespoons of Kaga bōcha and 200 mL of milk in a pan over medium heat. Turn off the heat when it begins to bubble, then strain the tea into a cup.
This method extracts the tea in milk. Along with the ingredients, it requires a pan and a strainer to remove the tea. It also differs from adding milk to tea brewed in water: the tea is in the milk from the start.
Tea for brewing, tea powder and instant tea are different ingredients
The quantities in a method for brewing tea or a method using a specified instant tea assume those ingredients. Tea powder intended for baking or a sweetened mix with a similar name is not necessarily a substitute in the same quantity.
Read the ingredient name all the way through, including the product name and intended use. If you do not yet know what changing the ingredient will alter, completing one method first gives you a cup to compare with the next attempt.