Ingredient

Matcha

Matcha is green tea leaf ground to a powder so fine it behaves like a pigment, then whisked into liquid instead of infused and strained. You drink the leaf rather than an extract of it, which is why it tastes so much more intense than a cup of brewed green tea and why it colours everything it touches.

What matcha actually is

It starts as ordinary tea — Camellia sinensis, the same plant as green, black and oolong. What makes it matcha is two things done to it.

First, the plants are shaded for several weeks before picking. Deprived of full sun the leaf makes more chlorophyll and holds on to more of the amino acids that taste savoury, so it comes off the bush greener and sweeter and less bitter than an unshaded leaf.

Second, the picked leaf is steamed to stop it oxidising, dried, stripped of stem and vein, and then stone-ground. The grinding is slow and produces very little at a time, which is most of why good matcha is expensive. The powder is fine enough to stay suspended in water rather than sinking, and that suspension is the drink.

What it tastes like

Vegetal and savoury before it is anything else — the word people reach for is seaweed, and it is a fair description. Underneath that there is a sweetness that arrives late, a thick, almost creamy feel in the mouth, and a bitterness that sits at the back.

How much bitterness depends almost entirely on the grade and on how you made it. Good matcha whisked in water that is not too hot is smooth with a bitter edge. Cheap matcha in boiling water is astringent enough to make your mouth feel dry, and no amount of sugar covers it.

Grades, and what the words mean

The terms are marketing rather than a regulated standard, so treat them as a rough guide to how the leaf was picked rather than as a grading system.

Ceremonial

The youngest leaves, brightest green, least bitter, most expensive. Meant to be drunk with water and nothing else. Using it in a cake is a waste of money — the sugar and butter flatten exactly what you paid for.

Culinary or cooking grade

Later-picked leaf, duller green, more bitter, cheaper. This is what you want for lattes, ice cream and baking, where the bitterness is useful and there is dairy and sugar to balance it.

Latte grade

Between the two, sold on the basis that it will not disappear into milk. Often exactly the same thing as culinary grade with a different label.

A useful test

Colour. Bright, almost fluorescent green means young shaded leaf. Olive, khaki or yellowish means older leaf, stems, or powder that has been sitting in the light.

How to make a bowl of it

The traditional method, which is also the one that gets you the fewest lumps.

1. Sieve one to two teaspoons of matcha into a wide bowl. This is not optional and it is the single biggest thing that stops lumps.
2. Add a splash of water — roughly a tablespoon — and work it into a smooth paste against the side of the bowl.
3. Add the rest of the water, around 60 to 70 ml for a thin bowl, and whisk. Water off the boil and left to stand for a couple of minutes is the usual advice; boiling water makes it harsh.
4. Whisk in a brisk W or M shape from the wrist, not a circular stir. You are trying to beat air in, not dissolve anything.
5. Stop when there is a fine, even foam across the surface with no large bubbles. Drink it straight away — it separates within a few minutes.

Why it clumps, and what to do about it

Matcha does not dissolve. Nothing in it goes into solution; the powder is suspended, and a suspension is much easier to break than a solution is to make. The particles are also extremely fine and slightly oily, so when water hits a heap of them the outside of the heap wets first and seals the inside dry. That is a lump, and stirring harder does not open it.

Two habits prevent almost all of it. Sieve the powder before the water goes anywhere near it, which breaks up the compacted clumps that form in the tin. And wet it in stages — a paste first, the rest of the liquid after — so that every particle is already wet before the volume arrives.

If you have already got lumps, pushing the liquid through a fine sieve rescues it. It will not be as good as it would have been, because you have lost the foam, but it will not be gritty.

Cooking and baking with it

Matcha is a colour and a bitter note as much as a flavour. It works where those are wanted and fights everything else.

• Sieve it in with the dry ingredients in a cake or biscuit rather than dissolving it in liquid. It disperses far better through flour than through water.
• Expect the colour to shift. Heat and time turn bright green towards olive. There is nothing wrong with it; the alkaline environment of a batter with baking powder in it pushes the same way. Doughs and batters that go into the oven briefly keep more colour than ones that bake for an hour.
• Use more than you think for anything with dairy in it. Milk fat coats the tongue and blunts the bitterness that carries the flavour, which is why matcha ice cream needs a startling amount of powder to taste of anything.
• Pair it with white chocolate, cream, coconut, black sesame, red bean, strawberry or lemon. These either soften the bitterness or answer it with acidity.
• Do not boil it. In a custard or a sauce, whisk it in off the heat at the end.

Buying and storing

Matcha degrades faster than almost anything else in the cupboard, and it degrades in the direction of tasting worse rather than of being unsafe.

• Buy small tins. A large tin of good matcha is a worse deal than a small tin, because you will not finish it before the colour and the aroma go.
• Keep it airtight, cold-ish, dark and dry. Light and oxygen are what turn it brown; humidity is what turns it into a solid cake.
• If you keep it in the fridge or freezer, let the tin come back to room temperature before opening it, or condensation will get in.
• Once it smells of hay rather than of grass, it is past its best. It is not spoiled, but it will taste dusty and flat.

Common questions