Green tea solubility

[alexw]

Hi,

throwing a quick question out there in hope of some help, I am trying to infuse duck fat with green tea with not much success is there a technique known or is it simply that the tea compouns are not soluble in oil. I am trying to confit some rabbit legs for an assiette dish and currently using a green tea jus, buit would love to be able to work the flavour through the legs from the start.

thanks for any light anyone can shed.

Alex.

[JasonTrue]

What kind of green tea are you using? How old is it? How are you infusing it? How much are you using?

I usually use matcha when I want an intense flavor. Good, fresh sencha will produce a pretty dramatic infusion in water, but old or low-grade sencha just slightly discolors the water. Genmaicha would provide flavor from toasted rice, but if you were serving duck, I'd probably only use genmaicha as "ochazuke", a bowl of rice topped with something small and flavorful (like seasoned duck) over which prepared genmaicha is poured.

Mao feng will be slighly more perfumed than most Japanese green tea.

A number of products simply labeled "green tea" have very little in the way of redeeming character even as tea, and probably would provide nothing but astringency if infused in water.

[andiesenji]

I agree that matcha powder is the best solution.

Make a thin paste of a small amount of matcha powder and hot water (not boiling- 180° F. is best) and allow it to cool then warm the duck fat and add a very small amount of the paste until it is completely incorporated and then taste it.

If you want more of the flavor, add a bit more but take baby steps here as too much can overpower other flavors. Once you have a successful result, make a note of how much you used.

When I prepare pork chops this way, I use about half a teaspoon of matcha in half a tablespoon of hot water and dab it onto the pork chops with my finger tips and spread it around. This is for four large, thick loin chops.

A little goes a long way.

[alexw]

thanks for the info, will obtain different brands and see where it goes.

I can see from both your points different techniques to flavour different products (we are doing a confit of rabbit leg in duck fat), and from this we are hoping to infuse the confit oil with the green tea, I confit over 60 hours at 67C so the boiling not an issue. what I cannot seem to achieve is imparting any tea flavour into the fat prior to cooking from the basice 'green tea' bags or the sencha that we are using currently, as fat is usually the chefs flavour transporter of choice was wondering if the teas flavour itself was soluble in oil or not.

thanks again

Alex.