What is traditional Moroccan tea?

I was in Morocco a couple of years ago and had definitely lost count of the number of glasses of Moroccan tea I drank. The first few days I would sit in bars and order it then I realized that I might as well stop doing so-although I often continued to order it to accompany meals anyway-because there would be a thousand occasions when it would be offered to me: on arrival at hotels, while bargaining for the purchase of some beautiful piece of local handicraft, to accompany a chat. It was nearly difficult to decline, or at least I couldn’t, in part because I adore this beverage and in part because I can’t reject when everyone is smiling and urging me to sit down, unwind, and have tea.

I adore this custom since it represents the welcoming nature of a kind people.

Tea is prepared in beautiful silver teapots and served in glass glasses with an extremely charming ritual: it is poured into the glasses from a certain height so that the brew cools first and gives it even more flavor. The gesture with which the Moroccans do this is so harmonious and the tea that gushes out before my eyes so fragrant that I am enchanted every time. Not to mention the grins kids give you in return, making you feel loved and appreciated. During the reign of Mulay Isml, Morocco received tea as a present from Queen Anne of Great Britain in appreciation for freeing a number of British prisoners.

It was not until the mid-19th century, however, that it began to become popular: this was the period when British merchants traded it massively in the Tangier and Essaourira markets. Then, at the beginning of the next century, tea prices would fall and make it accessible not only among the wealthy classes but also the poorer ones until it became the most popular drink in the whole country.

Moroccan tea is made exclusively from green tea, which has excellent health advantages because, unlike black tea, it has not been fermented. In addition, tea tends to be astringent to the bowels while mint is dysenteric; consequently, the combination of the two helps people find the ideal intestinal balance, as Normin, the educated and incredibly kind owner of the riad where I spent the night in Tetuan, explained to me. The drink’s high sugar content makes it even more refreshing under the scorching Moroccan sun, but boiling it also promotes healthy body temperature regulation.

Definitely, however, I would advise against abusing it throughout life because the presence of so much sugar is certainly not healthy.

Ingredients for Moroccan mint tea are>

6 teaspoons of green tea and a few Moroccan mint leaves

80 g or so of brown sugar (you can increase or decrease the dose according to your taste)

Preparation

Place the tea leaves in the teapot and heat it on the fire. Pour some very hot water over it and rotate the teapot quickly so that you spin the water inside then throw away this water but not the tea leaves (help yourself with a strainer). Put the mint leaves and sugar together with the tea and pour in one liter of boiling water at this point.

If you prefer a stronger-tasting tea, steep it for a little longer than five minutes. The tea should then be served in glass by pouring it with a motion that gradually pushes the teapot’s spout away from the glass. The tea should then come down from the top and create a froth on the glass’s surface. Because this is how things are done here, enjoy the tea with your visitors.

This is one method to honor the visitor, who is precious.