Honey Pomelo Tea

not a tea but a preserve: rind shredded and de-bittered, cooked with the flesh and sugar to a thick marmalade, then let down with honey and spooned into hot water

Origin: China

From the journey of Pomelo.

Fēngmì yòuzi chá contains no tea leaves at all. It is a thick citrus preserve, kept in a jar in the refrigerator and spooned into hot or cold water to make a drink, and the word chá here means simply a hot infusion, as it does in a number of Chinese and Korean preparations that involve no Camellia sinensis whatsoever. It belongs to a family of East Asian citrus preserves that includes the Korean yuja-cha, and the two are constantly confused. They are made the same way and drunk the same way, but from different fruit: yuja is Citrus junos, a small, intensely aromatic, very sour citrus, whilst this is made from the pomelo, which is far larger, milder, and yields a great deal more rind. The pomelo version is correspondingly less perfumed and more substantial, and it is the one drunk across southern China. What makes it worth making rather than buying is that the commercial jars are mostly sugar syrup with a little shredded rind suspended in them. Made at home, with the flesh included and the rind cut generously, it is closer to a loose marmalade, and it can be eaten with a spoon or spread on toast as readily as stirred into water. The honey goes in cold at the end, since heating honey drives off exactly the floral aromatics it was added for.

Ingredients

Preserve

1 large pomelo, unwaxed, about 1.5 kg
1 tbsp fine salt, for scrubbing and soaking
300 g rock sugar or granulated sugar
250 ml water
2 tbsp lemon juice

To finish

350 g runny honey, mild

Method

Scrub the pomelo hard with salt under running water and dry it. Pare the coloured zest off in wide strips with a peeler, taking as little white as possible, and shred it into fine threads.
Soak the shredded zest in salted water for an hour, then rinse. Blanch it in boiling water for two minutes, drain, and repeat the blanching twice more.
Peel the pomelo, discard the thick pith, and free the flesh from every membrane, breaking it into loose sacs. You want about 500 g of clean flesh.
Put the flesh, blanched zest, sugar, water, and lemon juice into a wide heavy pan and bring to a gentle simmer.
Simmer gently for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring often as it thickens, until the mixture is jammy, glossy, and reduced by roughly half.
Cool to lukewarm, then stir in the honey thoroughly.
Pot into sterilised jars and refrigerate. To serve, stir one or two heaped teaspoons into a cup of hot water.

Notes

Use unwaxed fruit, since supermarket wax does not come off in blanching. This is not the Korean yuja-cha, which is made from Citrus junos and is sharper and more perfumed; the two are made identically and are worth comparing. Grapefruit can be substituted and gives a more bitter, more assertive preserve that some prefer. Keeps two months refrigerated and thickens as it sits, so add a spoonful of hot water to loosen if needed. Rock sugar gives a cleaner taste than granulated and is what Chinese cooks use, though either works.

The Gastrographer

Name: Honey Pomelo Tea
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 3 h
Yield: 20
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: 1 large pomelo, unwaxed, about 1.5 kg; 1 tbsp fine salt, for scrubbing and soaking; 300 g rock sugar or granulated sugar; 250 ml water; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 350 g runny honey, mild

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control