The Lemongrass tea recipe is for you if you are looking for a refreshing hot beverage.
Global Food Recipes
with Spices and Herbs
Free E-Book available for a limited time. Grab yours now and get instantly inspired!
You missed out!
Jump to:
🍵 What is Lemongrass Tea?
Lemongrass tea is prepared with fresh or dried green lemongrass leaves, white lemongrass stalks, or roots. It's a herbal tea, tisan.
You might have spotted lemongrass tea on your Asian neighborhood restaurant's menu, or you got introduced to it while at the spa.
Various Asian food joints such as Thai and Vietnamese restaurants will suggest you have a lemongrass tea after food.
In reputable spas, it is commonplace to serve a hot cup of lemongrass tea or even cold fruit infused waters before treatment. It helps you relax your body and mind.
I, personally, came across lemongrass tea for the first time on my first visit to India back in 2007. In the Indian subcontinent, they commonly serve up lemongrass tea prepared with the green leaves.
If you are looking to start a new year with new resolutions or if you just decided to change your ways for the better, then my lemongrass tea recipe will be a useful hot beverage in your repertoire.
🥬 Ingredients
Here is a quick ingredient overview. Us and metric measurement details with step-by-step instructions are located further below in the printable recipe card.
- Lemongrass
- Water
- Sweetener (optional)
- Black Tea (optional)
- Fresh Lemon Slice (optional)
You can choose to make lemongrass tea with fresh or died lemongrass.
Fresh Lemongrass: Use either root bulbs, white stalks or green blades. I use green blades because we grow them at home. If you purchase lemongrass in stores, you will only get bulbs and stalks. All parts make for a good herbal tisan tea.
Dried Lemongrass: Get dried lemongrass chopped or in powder. Both are a fine choice, but organic is preferred or dried oregano without treated pesticides.
🍯 Flavor Variations
Besides adding black tea leave to your lemongrass while your tea is brewing in the pot, you can also add the following ingredients to enhance your tea even further:
- green tea leaves, white tea or oolong
- fresh ginger root slices
- fresh turmeric root slices
- lime instead of lemon slices
- honey to sweeten or dried stevia leaves if you want to make it vegan
- other culinary herbs such as tulsi (holy basil) and peppermint.
You can turn this lemon grass tea into a cool lemongrass iced tea, by placing the strained tea into the fridge to cool down completely.
Serve your lemongrass iced tea with ice cubes and enjoy on a hot sunny day.
🔪 How to make it?
Follow these 3 main steps to prepare lemongrass tea from scratch at home.
Step 1
Rinse your lemongrass to get rid of impurities, but be careful to not cut yourself because lemongrass blades are sharp.
Cut your lemongrass into smaller pieces with a kitchen scissor.
Step 2
Keep a pot with water to cook on the stove and add in your lemongrass leaves.
Optional: Add loose tea leaves to the tea if you want to add caffeine to your lemongrass tea recipe.
Step 3
Simmer your tea in the pot covered for about 10 minutes (and 6 minutes if you add tea leaves).
Keep away from heat and allow the tea leaves to get infused for a few more minutes.
Strain tea from the leaves and serve hot with or without sugar.
🧉 How to prepare Tea Bags with Lemongrass?
Instead of boiling fresh lemongrass, you can prepare your tea bags at home with your dried or fresh homegrown lemongrass.
First, cut and dry your fresh and green lemongrass tea blades OR use dried lemongrass chopped.
Secondly, get these empty tea bags.
Thirdly, stuff your empty tea bags with your dried or fresh lemongrass pieces.
The smaller the lemongrass blade pieces, the better.
At last, you just need to use your teabags like any other tea bag. Place the tea bag in a cup and top with boiling hot water. Steep for 5 minutes or so before taking out the tea bag and discarding it.
💭 FAQ
Find a balance when consuming lemongrass tea. 1–2 cups of hot brewed lemongrass tea can be enjoyed daily if you like.
Whenever you feel like it! I think the best time to enjoy a freshly prepared cup of lemongrass tea is on a rainy day as a little pick me up or to relax after a long day. Paul says, that people in Goa tend to prepare Lemongrass tea during the rainy season, in India. I mainly prepare lemongrass tea in the evening after food to help my digestion and to get me into sleep mode.
No, lemongrass is not acidic because it's a grass and not a citrus fruit.
This Lemongrass tea recipe should be avoided during pregnancy and those who take prescription diuretics. In that case, I highly recommend consulting your physician.
🍶 More Herbal Tea Ideas
- Oregano Tea
- Mixed Detox Herbal Tea
- Honey Ginger Lemon Tea
- Mediterranean Mountain Tea by mediterraneanlatinloveaffair.com
📖 Recipe
Lemongrass Tea Recipe
Ingredients
To prepare Herbal Tea
- 2-3 stalks Lemongrass *see Notes
- 3 cups Water
To Serve up
- Sugar or other sweetener, optional
- Lemon Slice optional
- Black Tea Bags optional (I rarely use this, but it's for example served this way in India)
Instructions
- Pour the water into a small pan and heat up.3 cups Water
- If you use fresh lemongrass, cut your clean and rinsed lemongrass with a pair of scissors into smaller bits.2-3 stalks Lemongrass
- Add the fresh cut lemongrass to the cooking water. If you use dried lemongrass, add that instead to the water.
- Bring the water with the lemongrass to a boil. Once it's boiling, turn down the heat and then let it simmer for 5 minutes covered.
- Take from the heat and keep aside to steep covered for another 5 minutes.
- Strain the herbal lemongrass tisane with a sieve and collect the hot herbal tea in a cup.
- Optional: Serve hot with a slice of lemon and a tea bag, and you may add sugar, although I recommend trying it without sugar.Sugar, Lemon Slice, Black Tea Bags
Notes
- Turn this fresh lemongrass tea into an iced lemongrass tea by cooling it in the fridge and serving with ice cubes.
- Add a tea bag of black tea when serving this lemongrass tea if you are looking for more flavors in your tea.
Nutrition
🌾 What exactly is Lemongrass?
Lemongrass is literally a grass with about 3 feet (ca. 1 meter) elongated ½ inch broad growing bright-green leaves.
Lemongrass is NOT the same as Citronella grass. These are two different plants.
It is a tropical plant, native to India and South East Asia, where lemongrass grows in long slender green and white grass blades.
Lemongrass looks like any other long field grass blade, but you can always recognize it by its fresh lemony smell and taste and because it grows together in a tuft.
The blades, however, are fibrous and rather though, while the root and lower ends are more tender.
The full plant can be used, and while the white roots and stalks are more commonly used in South Eastern cuisine, the green blades are great to infuse water to make a herbal tea.
🍋 What does it taste and smell like?
As the name suggests, the plant got its name because of its resemblance to fresh lemon/citrus in taste and smell, but it does also have a refreshing and welcoming touch of grass.
Compared to lemon juice when heated, lemongrass doesn't alter in flavor, and it tends to be more intense, enriching other foods easily without the flavor profile getting altered.
It's not sour, it's rather sweet.
You can smell lemongrass when you are near a growing patch.
So, in that sense, the smell is strong, but when you drink a herbal brew of lemongrass, you don't feel overwhelmed by the flavors.
🌱 Growing
We have been growing lemongrass for years, in our tropical garden in Goa, India.
In our second base in the Austrian Alps, we didn't have that much success so far. It's too cold!
My conclusion: It doesn't make sense to grow lemongrass in a cold climate or indoors in a pot.
Lemongrass needs a lot of sun and a well-drained mud floor to grow thick, long, and green grass blades.
If there is too much rain during the rainy season, lemongrass can die, although it's quite a sturdy plant.
So, in the Northern Hemisphere, I suggest that you go and buy fresh green Lemongrass blades.
You usually get them nowadays too in regular supermarkets or otherwise at an Asian neighborhood stop.
I am always glad to have my lemongrass blades growing in the garden, as I get fresh grass that way whenever I require some.
Yes, it does make sense to grow your own at home to make this lemongrass tea recipe!
If you want to grow Lemongrass, then don't get seeds but instead the lemongrass plant.
If you have pets, keep the lemongrass away from them, or they are going to finish your plants.
Dogs and cats like to chew on lemongrass frequently in a day. Especially dogs have strong saliva and that destroyed your lemongrass.
