[Music]
I purchased a small spearmint plant at
the beginning of the season and it
already got well bigger than this
because I've trimmed some off but I'm
going to show you how to make mint tea
and I've already clipped some off and
we're ready to go to um rinsing it
off so I rinsed it off shook off the
excess water and put it on a towel it's
warm enough outside to set it in the sun
otherwise let it completely dry
inside then I wrapped it in bunches two
bunches and secured it with rubber bands
and hung them on hangers and hung those
on doorknobs and they have to dry really
really dry for like a week or two till
they're crunchy
crispy once the mint is Thoroughly dried
I mean really dry crunchy dry you want
to
crush the leaves off of the stems and
you don't want any little bit of stem in
here so you can twist them off crush
them off whatever you want to do pull
them off if you get a little bit of stem
in the bowl uh you can just take it out
so it's a little bit time consuming but
you'll understand why the drier the
better once you start playing with this
because it's no fun
um trying to pull the dry leaves off if
they're not cooperating so when they're
really dry they won't cooperate so next
we'll look at what to do once all the
leaves are off and you've got some tea
leaves I have a bunch of leaves here now
and some stems um and of course you want
it to be more crushed you don't want it
to be a powder so not going to blend it
or anything but you want want it to be
crushed tea leaves so if you have whole
leaves of course you want to crush them
as much as possible and you can use your
hands um if you have kids and their
hands are clean they might really enjoy
this too as long as they keep the tea
leaves in a ball so the bigger the ball
the better and next I'll show you um the
proportion of dry tea leaves to water
and we'll make some experiment
tea for every 1 cup of boiling water you
want one
teaspoon of the mint tea leaves so I'm
going to put one in here and get ready
for my boiling
water and by the way store the tea the
dyed tea in some kind of airtight
container that sealed and just keep it
in a cool place that's kind of dry you
don't have to refrigerate it it just put
it in your
cabinet time for the taste
test
M spearmint tea so now I harvested my
tea it's fall and I have it for the rest
of the winter so this is a nice way
to take care of all that mint that you
have growing in your garden one thing
about mint is that it can get really um
it can start to be like Ivy where it's
growing everywhere so if you do put some
in your garden keep an eye on it and cut
it back so that it doesn't get intrusive
into your other plants but um I'm really
liking this so I have my own fresh
spearmint tea and it's easy to make
[Music]