How to dry currant leaves for tea?

Everyone knows the useful properties of black currant berries, but few know that the leaves of the bush are also of considerable value. As well as in berries, they contain the lion's share of vitamin C, as well as a lot of other vitamins and elements. Tea, prepared from the leaves of black currant, has diaphoretic and diuretic, anti-inflammatory properties and excretes excreted uric acid. It is especially useful to drink such a drink to people with kidney and gallbladder diseases, weakened immunity, as well as with anemia or just to raise vitality. In addition, the wonderful aroma of currant leaves makes it possible to prepare from them a stunningly aromatic drink, which you can enjoy chilly autumn or winter evenings.

How to prepare the currant leaves for tea and properly dry them to save all the useful and taste qualities of the product? About this and how to properly prepare tea from dried leaves, we will tell below in our material.

Procurement of currant leaves for tea

The currant leaves for tea should be harvested in good dry weather in August and early September, when the harvest of berries is harvested, and the period of fall has not yet come. For this purpose, fresh, green specimens with no yellowed areas or any kind of damage are perfect. Do not collect leaves at the base or at the top of the branch, so as not to harm the subsequent harvest of currant berries. Attention should be paid to those leaves that are located in the center of the stems. It is also not recommended to tear off the raw material together with the pedicels, it is better to use scissors and cut the leaf plates without them.

How to dry the currant leaves for tea?

Collected currant leaves should be spread on a clean cloth cut or a sheet of paper in a dry ventilated room. The ideal option in a private building is an attic. You can also place the workpiece under a canopy in the shade, or on the balcony, but in this case it should be covered with gauze to protect it from flies and other insects.

Depending on the temperature conditions for drying, it may take from three to ten days. From time to time, you should mix the leaves, review the workpiece and get rid of the dubious specimens. If the temperature conditions or other factors do not allow drying the currant leaves in an old, good way, then you can use a dryer for fruits and vegetables or simply an oven for this purpose. The temperature regime must be maintained at the level of eighty degrees, and the raw material should be stirred from time to time.

After drying, the currant leaves should be ground in any available way and folded into a tissue bag or in paper bags.

For the preparation of tea, you can use dried leaves of black currant in pure form or combine them with dried mint, linden, jasmine flowers or other compositions of fruit and berry leaves. In addition, such a preparation can simply supplement the classic black or green tea, filling it with valuable properties, or prepare a drink with the addition of berries, whether dried or fresh or frozen.

Next, we offer a basic recipe for making tea from black currant leaves, which you can change at your discretion, adding other components.

Fruit tea from currant

Ingredients:

Preparation

Dried leaves are placed in a warm porcelain teapot and filled with boiled water. We cover the container with a lid and top with a terry towel and let the contents brew for about twenty to thirty minutes. At the end of the time, the infusion obtained is used as a tea leaves, poured into a cup and diluted with boiling water. We supplement the taste of the drink at will with honey or sugar and enjoy.