How to Make Authentic Moroccan Mint Tea

Moroccan mint tea is simple to make and easy to make badly. Almost every version served outside Morocco goes wrong in one of four places, and all four are fixable in under a minute.

Use gunpowder green tea

The leaves are rolled into small pellets, which is where the name comes from. Gunpowder is strong and astringent enough to hold its own against a large bunch of mint and several spoons of sugar. A delicate green tea disappears completely.

Rinse the leaves first

Pour a small amount of boiling water over the dry tea, swirl for thirty seconds, and throw that water away. This removes dust and a good deal of the harsh bitterness. Skipping it is the most common reason homemade mint tea tastes sharp.

Save the first infusion

Add a little more boiling water, bring it briefly to a simmer, then pour that liquid into a glass and set it aside. This first extraction carries most of the tea's aroma. It goes back into the pot after the mint and sugar are added, so nothing is lost — but it is not boiled along with the mint, which would flatten it.

Spearmint, and plenty of it

Na'na' is spearmint. Peppermint is far more aggressive and will take over. Use a whole large bunch for a litre of tea, stalks included — the stalks carry a surprising amount of flavour and hold the leaves off the bottom of the pot.

Do not boil the mint

Three or four minutes at a bare simmer is enough. Boiled mint turns bitter and blackens, and once it does there is no rescuing the pot.

Mix by pouring, not stirring

Fill a glass from the pot and pour it straight back in, three or four times. This dissolves the sugar and evens out the strength without disturbing the leaves. A spoon in the pot bruises the mint.

Pour from a height

The high pour is not showmanship. It aerates the tea, which softens the tannins, cools it enough to hold a thin glass, and raises the layer of foam — the taj, or crown — that is the sign of a properly made glass. Start with the spout close to the glass and lift as it fills.

The three glasses

A Moroccan host serves three rounds, each drawn from the same pot and each a little stronger than the last. A Maghrebi saying attaches a character to each — gentle as life, strong as love, bitter as death. Accepting all three is the polite thing to do.

Common questions about sugar

Traditional mint tea is sweet: roughly a tablespoon of sugar per glass, often added as a broken piece of sugar loaf. Reduce it if you like, but be aware that the sugar is doing real work rounding off the tannin, and an unsweetened pot will taste noticeably more bitter than you expect.