Don't Pour Extra Brewed Tea Down The Drain, Use It In Your Breakfast Instead

If throwing out leftovers is your pet peeve, repurposing them always feels triumphant. So if you have made a little too much tea, you don't have to pour it down the drain in defeat. It turns out that there are many ways to use extra brewed tea, and one such way is to incorporate it into your next mason jar of overnight oats.

Just as brewed tea can transform a pot of conventional oatmeal, you can also use it to infuse flavorful depth into overnight oats. Tea can be caffeinated or un-caffeinated, herbal, spicy, floral, or fruity and tends to have a bitter, tannin finish that brings sophistication. Whichever bit of tea you have leftover will pair beautifully with the creamy, comforting, and almost savory flavor profile of oatmeal. Since you're using leftover brewed tea, it won't add an extra step to an overnight oats recipe. Streamline a recipe even more with ready-to-make overnight oat mixes. In fact, you don't have to swap all of your liquid for brewed tea. You can add a cup of brewed tea and a cup of water, milk, or cream for the overnight soak, and you will still get a tea-forward taste. You can also bring out the flavors of the tea even more by reheating it with additional whole spices or aromatics, like vanilla. For example, in our recipe for Thai Iced Tea overnight oats, we infuse black tea with cardamom and star anise pods, then blend the spiced tea with sweetened and condensed milk.

While liquid and oats are all that's needed for the most basic overnight oat recipe, not adding spices, nut butters, dried fruit, and other flavorful ingredients would be a big mistake that would certainly result in a very boring porridge. Besides, the complexity of tea will instill an aromatic richness that will inspire and complement a wealth of other ingredients. For example, a fruity peach or raspberry tea-infused overnight oats should be garnished with fresh peaches and raspberries. Bring out the citric flavor of constant common orange tea by sprinkling orange zest over your overnight oats along with some tart yet sweet dried cranberries. 

Draw inspiration from these lemon-glazed earl grey cookies by infusing earl grey tea with vanilla and topping the overnight oats with lemon zest and a squeeze of lemon juice. A heavily spiced chai-infused overnight oats would work well with sweet and comforting caramelized apples and toasted walnuts. Swap half of the milk in this recipe for fresh pear overnight oats for leftover white tea. Black tea would bring a robust tannin richness that will stand up to cocoa powder in this recipe for fall fruit and cocoa overnight oats. Be sure to add delicate ingredients like fresh citrus, berries, and other fruit to overnight oats right before eating them, as soaking them overnight might compromise their texture and flavor. If your overnight oats come out too thick, you can stir any extra brewed tea in to thin them out.