Pine needle tea

[beachlover]

Surely boiling the pine needles for more than a couple of minutes has the same effect as in vegetables and that is to desroy the vitamin C? If that is true then chopping them up and putting them into boiling water and then leaving them, as you would for tea, makes the most sense.

 

[Viking]

Surely boiling the pine needles for more than a couple of minutes has the same effect as in vegetables and that is to desroy the vitamin C? If that is true then chopping them up and putting them into boiling water and then leaving them, as you would for tea, makes the most sense.

According to Stefan Kjällman a biologist who did a lot of research on this, it needs to be boiled 25 min and when chopped up 15 min. It´s also important that the water is boiling before you put in the pine needles to keep the vitamin C.

 

[beachlover]

According to Stefan Kjällman a biologist who did a lot of research on this, it needs to be boiled 25 min and when chopped up 15 min. It´s also important that the water is boiling before you put in the pine needles to keep the vitamin C.

Just done a search of nutritional stuff at home and online and all seem to agree that the water souble vitamins (and Vit C is one) are lost quickly by cooking, especially boiling. BUT, while some of the vitamin C is destroyed by boiling and heat, in the case of vegetables a lot is simply leached from the vegetables into the water, which in the case of pine needle tea would seem an advantage.
It looks then, as though there must be an ideal point in time at which the maximum amount of Vitamin C is moved into the water, but not destroyed by heat.
The other point which authors make is that chopping up vegetabes reduces Vitamin C when cooking, presumably to the water, which again is exactly the idea for pine needle tea. This would seem to support the notion that chopping up the needles makes more vitamin C available to the infusion / tea and would reduce the amount destroyed by heat, as it would go into the tea / infusion more easily, thus reducing "cooking" time.
All this is the science of Vitamin C though and has nothing to do with how the finished tea tastes, so if it works for you and you like the taste, maybe the science isn't the all important thing.

 

[match]

Going back to the question about Yew identification - if in doubt, avoid all 'short-needled' (1-2cm) trees (of which yew is one) and stick with 'long needled' (>4cm) trees, which includes the pine family.

 

[Kiamyr]

Cheers for all the tips, much appreciated.

Regards,

Kiamyr.

 

[shinobi]

Oh and one more thing, saying theres no need to chop them up is rubbish IMO
Without breaking the fibres open which is considerably tougher on pine needles you will not actually get a benefit from them, all your doing is tasting the broken fibre walls.

Do this little test, make three bowls worth of the same soup.
In the first bowl throw in a full clove of garlic
In the second bowl throw in a chopped clove of garlic
In the third bowl throw in a crushed clove of garlic

Then come back and tell me there is no difference.

Hang on a mo. All Viking is doing is telling you how he makes it in Sweden. He's not saying there's a right way or a wrong way. Just telling you how he's been taught to make it.

When I was in Sweden, we were trying out different methods. I found that if I chopped the needles, the infusion tasted strongly of Turpentine (I also spent longer picking out bits of needle from my teeth .) Also, if you only have one container, it's very hard to filter out the chopped needles. if you leave the needles whole, it's easier to pick them out.
my other tip would be to use the youngest sprouts possible to avoid the turps spoiling the taste. Pine tips are also nice for nibbling on when young.

Martin

 

[pierre girard]

Spruce Tea (medicinal):

This is a Medowewin (Grand Medicine Society) recipe for head or sinus cold.

Take a green piece of pine sapling ( no needles - White or Norway pine), a piece of white cedar, a piece of balsam, and a piece of black spruce - all with the bark left on. All these pieces should be the thickness of your little finger and four inches long.

Bring one gallon of water to a boil. Boil the sapling pieces for five to ten minutes. Take the kettle off the heat, let steep for a just a bit, and place a towel over your head and over the kettle (be careful not to get steam burns). Inhale the fumes for five minutes. Drink the gallon of tea.

This should clear up your head cold for the day.

It also makes a good spruce tea and can be used for spruce beer with processing.

PG