is a Japanese brown rice green tea consisting of

green tea Green tea is a type of tea made from the leaves and buds of the '' Camellia sinensis'' that have not undergone the withering and oxidation process that creates oolong teas and black teas. Green tea originated in China in the late 1st millenn ...

mixed with

roasted Roasting is a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air covers the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with temperatures of at least from an open flame, oven, or other heat source. Roasting can enhance the flavor through caramelizat ...

popped

brown rice Brown rice is a whole grain rice with only the inedible outer hull removed. This kind of rice sheds its outer hull or husk but the bran and germ layer remain on, constituting the brown or tan colour of rice. White rice is the same grain without ...

. It is sometimes referred to colloquially as "popcorn tea" because a few grains of the

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

pop during the roasting process and resemble

popcorn Popcorn (also called popped corn, popcorns, or pop-corn) is a variety of corn kernel which expands and puffs up when heated. The term also refers to the snack food produced by the expansion. It is one of the oldest snacks, with evidence of p ...

, or as "people's tea", as the rice served as a filler and reduced the price of the tea, making it historically more available for poorer Japanese. Today all segments of society drink genmaicha. It was also used by people

fasting Fasting is the act of refraining from eating, and sometimes drinking. However, from a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (before "breakfast"), or to the metabolic sta ...

for religious purposes or who found themselves to be between meals for long periods of time. Genmaicha_tea_brewed_and_unbrewed

The sugar and starch from the rice cause the tea to have a warm, full, nutty flavor. It is considered easy to drink and makes the stomach feel better. Tea steeped from genmaicha has a light yellow hue. Its flavor is mild and combines the fresh grassy flavor of green tea with the aroma of the roasted rice. Genmaicha is also sold with

matcha is a finely ground powder of green tea specially processed from shade-grown tea leaves. Shade growing gives matcha its characteristic bright green color and strong umami flavor. Matcha is typically consumed suspended in hot water. Matcha ori ...

(powdered green tea) added to it. This product is called . ''Matcha-iri genmaicha'' has a similar flavor to plain genmaicha, but the flavor is often stronger and the color more green than light yellow. In South Korea, a very similar tea is called '' hyeonminokcha'' (, 'brown rice green tea'), while the word '' hyeonmicha'' (), which is a

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

of ''genmaicha'', refers to an infusion of roasted brown rice in boiling water.

References

Japanese green tea Rice drinks {{tea-stub

See also

References