What ho, old chum! Over here in good old Blighty we’ve been making tea since those clever East India Company chaps started selling it to us in the 1800s.
These days, we’ve built up more than a few tips on how to make a good old fashioned pot of tea, that universal panecea for everything from a broken heart to a broken limb. So, if you want to keep your upper lip stiff, your beer warm and your financial sector collapsing like a flan in a cupboard, this is how we do it:
- Warm the pot. No, seriously, old chum, I know this is the kind of flim-flammery that you might think only your old Nana would indulge in, but actually, warming the pot is pretty blasted important. If you don’t, the water cools as soon as it hits the blighted thing, and then we’re talking lukewarm, barely-tasty tea of a kind that frankly, I wouldn’t serve to a Frenchman.
Use leaves, not bags. Let’s be honest here, chaps, tea bags do have a certain appeal. They’re easy, they’re clean, and they have all kinds of clever thingumies on the televison with monkeys and so forth. But nonetheless, it’s just not cricket to go for convenience, and leaves, which can circulate right through the jolly old pot, make a much better brew, what? Otherwise, you might as well employ one of those devilish Continental technology thingies like coffee pods, and frankly, were Lord Mountbatten to hear of that, he’d rotate in his grave so rapidly we could use him to power the Queen’s yacht.- Pour the water as soon as it boils! Don’t leave it to waste. Those clever chaps over at Kamikaze Cookery have blethered on about how best to employ an electric kettle , and one of the things they say is that black tea doesn’t “extract” properly below about 98 degrees Centigrade. So jolly well buck up, and pour that water as soon as the kettle starts whistling.
So that’s it. For tea that’s like an Etonian head boy (thick and rich), follow our tips.