Battle of the Mints

[kerravonsen]

Two different kinds of mint, two different ways of preparation.

Tub 34: Peppermint Tea

• 9g Dried Organic Peppermint Leaves (yes, I weighed them; trying to measure dried leaves by volume is the way to madness)
• 500ml boiling water

Steeped for 5 minutes, then took out the leaves.

• 4 tablespoons Natvia
• 1/2 teaspoon Guar Gum

Put in fridge to cool down, then in freezer.

Tub 37: Fresh Mint Puree

• Fresh mint leaves ("one sleeve" whatever the supermarket means by that; it is more than "one punnet" -- why don't they give the weight in grams?)
• Fresh Basil leaves (just a few)
• 250ml boiling water
• 5 T Natvia
• 1/2 teaspoon Guar Gum

Then I pureed the mixture.

Processed both of them on the "Sorbet" setting of my Ninja Creami machine.

The peppermint tea comes out ahead. They're both nice, but the fresh-pureed-mint has a bitter aftertaste which is unfortunate. They have different mint tastes because peppermint is not the same mint as one buys as "fresh mint"; the fresh mint is probably spearmint or some other mint, it is milder and not as "peppery" as peppermint is.

The peppermint tea had a a clean taste, whereas the pureed mint was more organic and muddy. The pureed mint had a nice green colour, the peppermint tea was so pale it was almost white.

I think it would be worthwhile either getting some dried spearmint to make tea from, or to just infuse the fresh mint -- that is, to prepare them both in the same way, and then compare them. Because it would be nice to have a mild mint sorbet as well as a peppermint sorbet. Mind you, making spearmint tea from dried leaves would be less work than stripping off all the fresh mint leaves in order to infuse them, so I'll probably try that first.

Even though I have not compared them, I'm pretty sure that the peppermint tea sorbet would have a nicer flavour than using peppermint essence instead. I don't know whether it would be worthwhile trying to make peppermint ice milk using peppermint essence - maybe, maybe not - but that's probably the only thing that would motivate me to use peppermint essence.