Making Lemongrass Tea

Each year when I'm ordering seeds, I always like to try something I've never planted.  Sometimes it is a vegetable that we've always eaten, just in another color - purple carrots, for example.  Sometimes it is an herb like lemon balm.  One year I tried to grow lavender and failed miserably.  This past year I wanted to try lemon grass.  It seemed like an easy thing to grow, and I always like things that smell good.  In fact, I find it hard to pass by basil plants in the store and NOT stop to squeeze a leaf and smell chocolate basil, pineapple basil and cinnamon basil.

Anyway, I got my seeds in, planted them and Boom!  They all germinated.  I planted them in the raised bed where I have basil planted and they took the whole place over.  It looks like weeds in a roadside ditch.

The main difference being that weeds in a roadside ditch don't quite smell like this!  If you cut some stalks of lemongrass off and inhale deeply, the soothing fragrance of lemons fills your nostrils.

Making tea is a very easy thing to do.  Just wash up the lemongrass to remove and dust and bugs.  Fill up a pot with water and begin heating the water.  While the water warms, simply cut the lemon grass leaves and stalks into the pot of water and bring to a boil.  It won't take long for the kitchen to fill with a nice lemon scent.

We allow the tea to steep for a while...

Then we pour through a strainer into mugs or tea cups.

Since we used an abundance of lemongrass, the tea we made had a strong lemon flavor and it was green.  It was delicious.  I am a coffee guy, but a hot cup of lemongrass tea in the morning would be nice, especially on weekends. 

After it cooled, we put the leftover in the fridge.  Lemongrass tea is very refreshing served as an iced tea.  Our winter has been relatively mild so far.  From what I read, lemongrass will survive the winter if it doesn't go lower than 20 degrees F.  So far it looks like our lemongrass is gonna make it.  If anyone would like some, I have some stalks that I'll gladly give you.  The remaining stalks and leaves left over after making tea is nice to keep around and smell, but we eventually put it in the compost pile.

In addition to tea, you can make soups, stir fry, or simple syrup with lemongrass.  I'm glad I tried it.  I hope it grows in the summertime, so we can make some lemongrass iced tea.