Stop Wasting Extra Ginger Tea And Add It To Your Favorite Soup

Ginger tea warms the way a good hot cuppa should. It can help with indigestion and even reduce inflammation, and, simply put, it's delicious. Even compared to other tasty teas, ginger stands out with its complex spiciness that brings just the right amount of sweet plus heat. To get the most from every last bit of gingery goodness, we dug into genius ways to use extra brewed tea. If you accidentally brewed more than you needed, or you were distracted and the tea got too cold, don't throw out what's left over. One of the most satisfying ideas for repurposing ginger tea is to use it in soup.

Ginger tea is delightful in many soup recipes, adding zest, sweetness, and herbaceousness. It complements the spices and seasonings in various recipes and cuts through the richness of heartier soups. Ginger is already a go-to ingredient for spicy Thai soups and some ramen recipes, and it also brightens root vegetables in modern classics like carrot ginger soup. Incorporating your extra tea is easy; it's simply a matter of modifying the amount you add based on the recipe you're using. For example, you can pour ginger tea into your broth — just make sure you're not skewing your broth-to-solids ratio in a direction you don't want. You can replace a portion of your broth with the tea, but you may want to sprinkle in extra herbs and seasonings, like garlic, so that the broth's flavor doesn't taste diluted.

When deciding what soups to add ginger tea to, consider whether you want to amplify the fragrant notes of a spicy or herb-forward soup, or temper a sweeter or richer soup. For instance, create a gorgeous plant-based riff on a Thai staple with tofu tom yum soup, which calls for grated ginger. The recipe also calls for 3 cups of vegetable broth, but you can swap 1 cup of broth for ginger tea and add a bit more onion and garlic to taste. This will firmly center that sweet, spicy ginger aroma in every spoonful. Ginger tea could also liven up a simple miso soup, which utilizes 5 cups of vegetable broth. Experiment to find the right balance of tea and broth for your liking, and enjoy a comforting miso soup with brighter, spiced notes. If you're making a puréed soup with carrot or sweet potato, splash in ginger tea and, in a snap, that sweet, starchy profile will sing with zestiness.

There's more than one way to add ginger tea to your soups, too. You can steep a teabag right in your soup. Depending on how many other ingredients you're working with, this could result in subtle ginger notes. Once you experience the delicious joy of ginger tea-infused soup, you might feel inspired to try other tea-and-soup combinations, like green tea with split pea soup or red lentil soup with lemon tea.