- 6
- 5 mins
- 245 mins
Ingredients
- 6 cups (1500ml) water
- 1 red beet , quartered (optional for color)
- 2 whole cinnamon sticks, about 3 inches long
- 4 whole star anise
- 4 whole cloves
- 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds
- 10 teabags black, green, or roobios (or about 8 to 10 teaspoons of loose tea in a very large tea ball or muslin tea bag)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 teaspoons orange flower water
- 1/2 to 1 cup (100 to 200 g) sugar (or other sweetener like maple syrup, stevia or agave nectar, or leave unsweetened if you prefer)
Preparation
Step 1
This is much easier to clean up if you put the spices in a re-usable muslin tea bag. It takes more work to get all the cardamom seeds out without it. You can throw the whole bag into the slow cooker and it’s easy to take out. Then just rinse the tea bag out and let it dry before you put it away. It will be waiting for the next batch of tea concentrate you make.
Put water, beet and spices (or all of the spices in a spice bag) in the slow cooker. Cook on low for 4 hours.
Remove spice bag and beets. Add in tea bags to the slow cooker and turn to high. Let seep 5 to 10 minutes depending on how concentrated you want the flavor to be. Remove teabags and add vanilla, orange flower water, and sweetener.
(If you didn’t use a spice bag, before adding extracts and sweetener – pour into a pitcher while straining out the spices through a piece of cheesecloth places in a funnel to remove the rest of the whole spice.)
Store in the fridge for 1 to 2 weeks. Use about 1/2 glass concentrate to 1/2 glass non-dairy milk. I like to use So Delicious Unsweetened Coconut milk which comes as no surprise, but unsweetened vanilla almond milk works well too. It’s also good with slow cooker evaporated coconut milk too.