- Today, I'm going to share with you how to make turmeric tea
to boost your immune system and ward off colds and flu. (upbeat music) Hi, Sweet Friends. I'm Mary, and welcome to Mary's Nest where I teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient dense
foods like bone broth, ferment sourdough, and more. So if you enjoy learning
about those things consider subscribing to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below that'll let you know every
time I upload a new video. Well, turmeric tea is very easy to make. And the basic recipe is
only four ingredients, five, if you count water, but the nice thing about turmeric tea that really has in common with so many of these
healing herbal spice mixtures is that you can customize this to add additional herb and spices to not only improve the
nutritional and healing benefits, but to also change the flavors. Now, you don't need to write anything down because I'll put a link
in the description below. You'll see the word recipe and just click on the link next to that and that'll take you over to my website where you can read the recipe
online or print it out, and I'll have the basic recipe, plus all the possible
customizations that I recommend. And also in the description
below and the pinned comment, because I know for some of you that's a little easier to find I will have timestamps
that will walk you through the basic recipe, and then
timestamps where I talk about the different ways you can
customize your turmeric tea. So first I want to talk about
the benefits of turmeric, but if you already know that
and you just want to jump ahead and get ready to make the tea, then be sure to check the timestamps. Now, why is there so
much talk about turmeric being so beneficial for us, so healing, so medicinal,
so on and so forth? Well, we're very fortunate
that over the years, scientists have studied turmeric and they have found so
many wonderful healing and medicinal properties
that are contained in this very simple root. And if you're not familiar
with fresh turmeric, this is what it looks like. It's just a whole piece, very similar in many ways if you're familiar with fresh ginger. Turmeric is very similar. It's got that sort of papery
type skin similar to ginger, and you can either peel this
and just use like a spoon or I find a serrated grapefruit
spoon works very well, just the same way I would peel ginger. And then when you slice this open, it's orange instead of the pale whitish or pale yellow that ginger is. Now, I know when I've talked
about turmeric before, some of you have told me
that finding fresh turmeric can be difficult for you and
I understand that completely, but you don't need to worry because you can always
use the ground turmeric in any of the recipes where
I talk about using turmeric, whether it's a fresh or the
ground, either will work. And today when we make the tea, I'm going to use the ground turmeric because I know most of you can find this. This is very easy generally
to find in your grocery store in the spice aisle. Now, in the blog post where the recipe is that corresponds with this video, I'll have a lot of link to
different scientific articles if that's the type of thing
that you really enjoy reading that talks in detail about how
science has studied turmeric and what they found. But just to quickly summarize, basically turmeric is a
wonderful antioxidant. And what does that mean, antioxidant? It basically fights oxidation in our body, and oxidation is
something that's damaging. It's often something you may have heard the term free radicals and these free radicals
are sort of going around ravaging our body and antioxidants
put the brakes on them. And so the more antioxidants that we eat, you hear in fresh fruits and vegetables and green tea and coffee
and things like this, the better off we are. scientists tell us the healthier we'll be The more we incorporate
antioxidants into our diet. And specifically the ingredient that scientists tend to
study that's in turmeric is something called curcumin, and I believe I'm
pronouncing that correctly. And it's curcumin that is credited with a lot of these health benefits, with a lot of these medicinal properties. And so scientists have
found that this curcumin and other compounds that are in turmeric, but not as strong or as in great, that's the same proportion
as the curcumin, which is sort of the leader
of the group, so to speak. But what scientists have
found is that this curcumin has all types of wonderful properties, anti-inflammatory and anti-viral, anti-microbial anti-bacterial. I mean, it's really in
many ways, a wonder spice. And specifically when it
comes to colds and flus, scientists have found that curcumin and all the other compounds
that are in turmeric when made into a tea can be
very soothing and healing when you have a cold or the flu, or it can actually
boost your immune system to help you fend off colds and flu. Now, there is one drawback to all of this. Curcumin can be difficult
for us to absorb, but there's a little trick. There's an ingredient. And I think it's piperine, it's pronounced something like that. But there's an ingredient
in black peppercorns, in these whole black peppercorns that contains this ingredient that helps our body absorb the curcumin and the other compounds
that are in turmeric. So whenever you're making a turmeric tea or even cooking with turmeric, it's always beneficial to
add in some black pepper. Also when it comes to cooking,
turmeric being fat-soluble benefits very well if in your cooking you include some high quality
fat like a butter or a ghee. So there's nothing to keep you from when you make your turmeric tea maybe having a little
buttered toast on the side. Tea and toast, I think it's perfect when you're under the weather. But even when you don't
have a cold or the flu, drinking turmeric tea,
as I mentioned earlier, can help boost your immune system. So you can never go wrong with enjoying a cup of turmeric tea. And scientists tell us that
it's also good for brain health and heart health. It really is, as I said earlier, it's kind of the wonder spice. So drinking turmeric
tea on a regular basis is wonderful advice. Now, today I'm going to make two
12 ounce cups of turmeric tea, one for me and one for my husband, but you can make this in
larger batches very easily. This doubles, triples,
quadruples very well. And once it's made, you can store the tea in your refrigerator and then warm it later when
you're ready to enjoy it, or you can even enjoy cold
during the summer months. Alrighty, now let's make the tea. Well, the first thing
that you're going to need is three cups of water
and this'll yield us the two 12 ounce cups of turmeric tea. Next, you'll just want to decide if you're going to be using fresh turmeric or if you're going to be using
the ground dried turmeric. If you're using the powder turmeric, then you just want one teaspoon. If you're using the fresh turmeric, you're going to want about one tablespoon of freshly grated turmeric. And basically you could just try starting with maybe a little two inch piece that should yield you about a
tablespoon of grated turmeric. Now for the black pepper, you can use either the whole peppercorns or you can use freshly
ground black pepper. And you want to use freshly
ground black pepper if you can, because once the whole
peppercorns are ground, they tend to lose a little bit of their beneficial properties. So if you do have a little
pepper grinder, great. Or you can just go ahead and
use the whole peppercorns. If you're going to use whole peppercorns, you're going to want 16. If you're going to use the
freshly ground black pepper, you're going to want
about a half a teaspoon of the freshly ground black pepper. But if you can use the whole peppercorns, I find these work a little better because it's a little easier
when you go to strain your tea, unless your mesh strainer
is really, really fine, sometimes the freshly ground black pepper will go through your strainer
and it'll be in your tea. Now if you don't mind
that, it's not a big issue, but if you want to make
it easier to strain, the whole peppercorns work great. Now those are the two basic
ingredients to make the tea. Next, what you're going to need, what you're going to put
in after you make the tea, is going to be some honey to sweeten. Now, yes, if you don't want to use honey, you can definitely leave it out and just drink it as is. Or you can use one of the natural, low-cal sweeteners, or
no-cal, no-cal sweeteners, like stevia to sweeten it. That's certainly fine to do, but if you're already fighting
a cold or fighting the flu, you may find a little
bit of honey in there can be very soothing,
especially to your airways, your throat near your bronchial passages. So that's something to keep in mind, but if you can't take any sweetener, then yes, definitely, you
can use one of the low-cal or no-cal sweeteners. Next, we're going to
add in some lemon juice. And this is again, once
we've already made the tea and we've taken it off the heat, and the reason is we don't
want to put the lemon juice into the tea when it's simmering, because the vitamin C is
susceptible to the heat. And not only can you put
in the juice of the lemon, you're going to want the
juice of one whole lemon and you're going to divide the
juice of between the two cups of the two 12 ounce cups of turmeric tea. Now, if you're not using any sweetener, yes, you can cut back on the
amount of lemon that you add. And can you leave it out? Yes. However, it is nice
because the lemon juice is very high in vitamin C and you can even take a
little bit of the rind and you can just kind of do a little twist like that to release some
of the essential oils I'll show you when we get to that part. if you want to add a little bit of the essential oils in, which
are also very beneficial and very rich in antioxidants for us. But again, you don't
want to put the zest into when you're actually
simmering the turmeric and the black pepper, and the reason is the zest and the pith, all of this is very high in vitamin C and can be easily damaged by the heat. So these are the two ingredients
we're going to start with the turmeric, the ground
turmeric and the black pepper, and then we'll add the
honey and the lemon next. Now, let's take a minute to talk about some possible combinations where you can customize your turmeric tea, maybe based on different nutrients
you would like to add in, or maybe different symptoms you're having that you're hoping to comfort
with herbs and spices. The first one I want to talk about, which is really a good spice
to keep in your cabinet, and that's cardamom. And it kind of goes hand
in hand with turmeric tea in many ways, because it's very, you know, turmeric tea is originally a recipe that has been developed in India, along with the turmeric golden milk which you may be familiar with. I showed you how to
make that a while back, and I show you how to make
a golden turmeric mix, which you can just keep
handy in your pantry and then whenever you
need to make up a batch, you can just add it, the powdered mixture that
I show you how to make, right into your milk and boom,
your golden milk is done. So I'll be sure to link
to that in the I-cards and in the description below. But that's just wonderful too if you're really feeling
under the weather. I used to give that to my son and he'd say, "The milk is yellow!" (laughing) But it's actually, it's very healing and you can make it with things
that are non-dairy as well. So if milk doesn't agree with you, yes, you can use coconut
milk or things like that. But in any event, I used
some cardamom in there so. But talking about cardamom,
it's very good for digestion. Now, if you feel the turmeric may be a little hard on your stomach, that's why I highly
recommend turmeric tea, as opposed to taking turmeric pills, because turmeric can
sometimes be a little strong for some people, but adding
in a little cardamom, this is ground cardamom here. And these are cardamom pods, which you can just crack and
put right into your mixture, either or will work. But as I said, wonderful for digestion. And so it can kind of
help with this whole idea of taking turmeric in a tea form, but it also helps with things like nausea and different symptoms that can accompany when you have a cold or the flu. And so that can be very healing, very soothing and kind of help tamp down the feeling of nausea. And if you've never had
cardamom, I love it. It has a wonderful, almost like a lemony
kind of citrusy smell, and it is very soothing
and it's very tasty. So that's definitely
something to think about. Now, if you have a cough
accompanied with your cold or the flu, you may want to
consider adding some thyme, and this is just some ground
thyme, just dried thyme. Thyme contains an ingredient and I believe it's pronounced thymol, (laughing) but it is very soothing
to the bronchial passages. And so if you have a cough,
thyme can help soothed that. I even shared with you, if
you've been with me awhile, you may remember I showed you
how to make a cough medicine, you know, sort of a home remedy
cough medicine using thyme. And it works really well. So you could add a
little bit of dried thyme to your saucepan when you're
simmering the turmeric and the black pepper together. The same with the cardamom,
you would add these right in at that stage where you are
simmering them on the stove. And I'll have all these directions in the written recipe
with all these variations so don't worry, and how much
to use and so on and so forth. Next, if you're feeling really congested in your nasal passages and in your, as my mother would say, the flanges, you know, the airways
leading to your lungs, some red pepper can work great. And you can just use
the crushed red pepper, or here I've got some ground cayenne. Any of this, any kind of
hot pepper that you like, whether it's the flakes
or in the ground form will work great. And a little bit of that will
really open up your airways and open up your flanges and should have you breathing
a little better for awhile. So that's definitely
something to keep in mind. Also, something that I really
like to add to turmeric tea, and then again, all of
these you would be adding in at the simmering stage on the stove. The only two you really need
to worry about is your honey especially if you're using
raw honey, and your citrus. And again, with the citrus,
I'm going with lemon, you could use lime, you can use orange, you could use grapefruit, really whatever you have
in your refrigerator will work great. All the citruses are
very high in vitamin C. But one of the things
that I really like to add is either some fresh ginger
or some ground ginger. And either, again, either will work and they are wonderful. Ginger in many ways like
turmeric is a wonderful spice. It's one of these that
really is a catch-all. It's anti-inflammatory, you know, anti-viral anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, you know, it's got a
little bit of everything in it to help you. Also, it's a little spicy, so much like the red pepper
flakes and the ground, in my case, I have the cayenne, it can help you breathe a little better, and it's not as strong
as your spicy peppers. You know, it does have some spice to it, but it can be a little more gentle if you're not used to
really using stronger spices in your food and in this case, our tea. So ginger can be a great place to start. Next, I want to talk about cinnamon. Now, cinnamon, real cinnamon, ceylon cinnamon has a lot
of healing properties. Also in many ways, once
you've got your ginger, your turmeric and some
cinnamon, you're really covered. And the nice thing about cinnamon, especially if you're not
going to be using any honey, is that it adds a nice flavor and almost a little bit of sweetness. And you can use the ground cinnamon, or if you want, you
can use cinnamon sticks and you can just break them up. Again, these are all going to be simmering with your turmeric and your black pepper. Now, speaking of cinnamon, I just want to clarify the difference between cassia and ceylon cinnamon. They're very similar in
flavor, they look similar, but if you notice the
actual ceylon cinnamon is lighter in color, and the cassia almost has a little reddish,
brownish tinge to it, and this is going to break very easily, and this is going to be
a little harder to break. But as I said, taste-wise,
they're very similar. Nutritionally, they're a little different. And cassia does have
benefits, as does cinnamon, and often a lot of what you'll
see sold at the grocery store will actually be a ground from cassia. But what I want to mention about cassia, if you were going to be using
this as your cinnamon every day, you may want to think about getting the ceylon cinnamon instead, only because there have been some studies, and I'll put links to this,
as I said, in the blog post so you can read more about it, but there have been some medical studies that have found that cassia can be a little hard on the
liver and/or maybe the kidneys. So if it's something that you're
going to use every single day, and if you already had
liver or kidney problems, you know, you may want
to be a little careful with the cassia. So that's something definitely that you'll want to investigate. Alrighty, well now we'll
get ready to make our tea. And as I said, we're going to just do the very basic version today so that you can see how this is made, and then you can customize
it any way you want. And these are just ways
that I customize it and suggestions that I'm giving, you can do all sorts of things. Really it's a matter of herbs
and spices that you like or that you're familiar with. And if you're very new to
using herbs and spices, I highly recommend this book. It's called "Rosemary
Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide." I love this book. And if any of you know Heidi
over at Rain Country Homestead. she actually introduced me
to Rosemary Gladstar's books. And I am so glad she
did because that book, I mean, it's a beginner's guide, but whether you're a beginner or you're very familiar with herbs and their medicinal properties,
you'll love this book. She has recipes and so much information, and she walks you through
all the different herbs and all of their medicinal properties. And then she shares a recipe or two on how to make something
using those herbs. So I highly recommend that. But in any event, alrighty, so here we go. We're going to put our three
cups of water into our sauce pan, in a small sauce pan, it works great. Then the next thing we're going to do is we're going to take a
teaspoon of our ground turmeric. And as I said, we're going
to use the ground turmeric, but you can definitely use
the fresh turmeric as well. And it works well to
just help kind of release all of its properties by grating it, but if you don't have the
ability to grate the turmeric, you can just slice it very thin as well. Alrighty, let me just
get my teaspoon here. I'm going to go ahead and dump that right down into our sauce pan. Now, I want to mention a word
about working with turmeric, whether it's the ground
turmeric or fresh turmeric, turmeric stains, and it
stains like the dickens, I'm telling you. So be careful when you're working with it. If you notice, I got a
lot of dark colors on. And when you slice up the fresh turmeric, it may stain your hands a bit. It'll wash off and it
will wear off in a day, but if that type of thing bothers you, you'll definitely want to wear gloves. Alrighty. Now I'm just going
to count out 16 peppercorns. You don't really need to be that exact. I got four in there, but now another two, six, but basically that's basically the amount that you're looking for. I'm going to take this over to my stove, I'm going to bring it up to a boil, then we're going to turn it down to low and I'm going to cover it because I want to prevent evaporation, and we're going to let
it simmer for 10 minutes. Well, while the tea
simmering over on the stove, I want to get my cup ready
with the lemon and the honey. I've got an organic lemon
here, but if you don't, don't worry, you can still use the peel. Just give it a good washing. Now you don't have to do this, but what I'm going to do is just take off a little bit of the zest here, and then I'm going to just twizzle this right into my glass here. And you'll notice you'll like doing this because when you squeeze the pith, it releases the essential
oils from the lemon peel and it smells wonderful. It smells on my fingers and everything. And basically what I've done
here in taking the peel off, I have only a tiny little
bit of the pith there. You want to get as
little pith as possible. Although the pith is
nutritious in this tea, it can make it a little bitter, but I'll go ahead and put
that right in there like that. Next, I'm going to cut this lemon in half. And then what I'm going
to do is squeeze this just using a little mesh strainer here to catch all the pits. I'm going to squeeze in
half of the juice or half, I'm going to use half of a
lemon to squeeze this juice in that I'll have for my tea. Now, if you find the
juice from half a lemon to be a little too much, of course you can go with less. Next, I'm going to add
in a teaspoon of honey. And this is honey my
husband's cousin gives to us. I'm going to just put in a
teaspoon right into my glass. See if I can do this neatly. But yeah, he raises bees (laughing) and he gives us some of the
honey, which is wonderful. And a pourable honey works very well here, but if you have one of those
sort of thick creamed honeys, you can certainly use that because the warmth of the turmeric tea will help dissolve it. But what I like to do is
simply mix the lemon juice and the tea, and the tea? And mix the lemon juice
and the honey together. Now, as I mentioned earlier, if you can't take any kind of sweetener, you can definitely leave the honey out. But if you want to give it some sweetness, you can certainly use one of the low-cal, no-cal sweeteners like stevia. Now I brought this over to my stove. I brought it up to a boil. Once it came up to a boil, I immediately turned it down to low, the lowest setting that
you have on your stove. I put the lid on and let
it simmer for 10 minutes. Now I've removed the lid
and I've just let it cool just a few minutes, because I don't want to
put the piping hot tea into my glass with the
lemon juice and the honey, because I don't want to
damage either of them. So you just want to let
it cool down a little bit. Now I'm just going to go
ahead and ladle some of this into the glass and we'll take a taste. Now, I want to mention if
you've never had turmeric, if you've never had a turmeric tea or maybe a turmeric golden milk, it's got somewhat of an earthy
I would say flavor to it. It's not strong, like a coriander or cumin. It's just a little earthy, but pleasant. But I think that in order to offset some of that earthy flavor is why when you see the golden milk or the golden milk teas or in this case, just the straight turmeric tea, people often will add a little bit of lemon juice or lime juice, or, you know, one of the citrus juices and
maybe a little bit of sweetener just to sort of offset
that more earthy flavor. Now, if you want to get fancy, you can always use one
of the cinnamon sticks as a little twizzle stick
to stir this all around and make sure that lemon juice and honey is well distributed. And it'll also impart
a little bit of flavor. Alrighty, well, let's give this a taste. Mm. Oh, that's so delicious. And perfect for every day, but also especially comforting
if you have a cold or a flu. Now, if you'd like more recipes for immune boosting foods and
lots of other home remedies, be sure to click on this video over here. We'll have a whole playlist
where I show you how to make elderberry syrup and a super mineral broth and all sorts of wonderful things. And I'll see over there in my
Texas Hill Country kitchen. Love and God bless.
(upbeat music)
