Comments | food_porn: Sencha?

xkagomex in food_porn

Sencha?

Dec 19, 2006 12:26

I'm making green tea truffles and the recipe asks for Matcha powder and Sencha. Are these different things? It tells me to grind up the Sencha and sift it because I only want the powder. I googled it and it appears to just be a type of green tea. I know I can get matcha at the Japanese market, but what about Sencha? Is it pretty easy to find? Is ( Read more... )

sencha, matcha, recipe help

Comments 9

scearley December 19 2006, 19:51:46 UTC

Sencha means "common tea." Plain, everyday common variety japanese green tea. Well, plus it's roasted. But otherwise, easy to get, especially if you can get your hands on some maccha.

xkagomex December 19 2006, 19:53:07 UTC

so I can just buy any loose leaf green tea that's been roasted basically?

tomsalt December 19 2006, 20:20:43 UTC

I wouldn't. There's a huge variety among 'green' teas. The Sencha I've had will actually brew up a greenish liquid, while most Chinese green teas brew up brown. The taste is also quite different. My experience is that Sencha tends to actually taste green (a bit grassy sometimes). Wikipedia has a brief article on it. And while I can't link directly to the page for their Sencha Shizuoka (the product pages don't have pictures, grr) you see the difference in the leaves here, at my favorite tea shop.

mcsassypants December 19 2006, 20:46:02 UTC

Sencha is a fairly common green tea. One that people tend to drink daily.

Matcha is actually ground Gyokuro.

From what I understand, Gyokuro and Sencha are similar in flavor, but Gyokuro is a bit more complex.

zenith_the_high December 19 2006, 21:38:26 UTC

if you can get a high quality green tea, it would probably work. if not, i would bet you could use more matcha.

xkagomex December 20 2006, 01:00:13 UTC

well, after going to the store and going through 2 giant tea aisles, i found sencha and no matcha powder! now, i have no idea where to get that.

nessaneko December 20 2006, 08:14:19 UTC

Try the Asian grocery store? Maccha is the powder used in Japanese tea ceremony, and can be pretty hard to find outside of Japan. I brought a tin back from Japan.

nessaneko December 20 2006, 08:15:15 UTC

Also, may I have the recipe for the truffles? They sound amazing, and I plan to make truffles this Saturday anyway. They'd go nicely with the dark chocolate and ginger ones...

Thread 5