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Welcome to our blog post on Fennel Seed Tea! Whether you’re a tea enthusiast or simply looking to explore new beverages, this beginner’s guide will take you through the wonderful world of Fennel Seed Tea. From its numerous health benefits to step-by-step instructions on how to make it, we’ve got you covered. So grab your mug and let’s dive into the aromatic and refreshing world of Fennel Seed Tea!
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What Is Fennel Seed Tea?
Fennel Tea Is an herbal seed infusion derived from the fennel seed. Fennel seeds have been used for centuries as a medicinal aid. Today fennel can be found in many traditional dishes and in cooking in general. Fennel is a flowering plant in the carrot family(source). Although they are often referred to as fennel seeds, the seeds are actually the fruit of the flowering fennel plant.
But it is common to refer to them as seeds and it’s widely recognized as acceptable to do so. Fennel is native to the Mediterranean but is grown all over the world and can be added to home herbal gardens in some climates. Fennel seed is a common spice and can be purchased at most grocery stores.
How To Make Fennel Seed Tea
Making a good cup of fennel tea is not going to be as tough as some other teas. Fennel seed isn’t as delicate as green tea leaves or many of your herbal flower teas. So you are not going to have to worry about over steeping or burning your leaves as much as you would with some of the more delicate teas.
But there are some factors to take into consideration to make sure that you get the best cup of fennel tea every single time you go to sleep one. Let’s have a look.
Use The Best Water You Can For Your Fennel Tea
One of the most overlooked aspects of making a cup of fennel tea, or any tea for that matter, is the quality of the water that you use to make it. A lot of times people will just take some tap water put it in a kettle and go from there. But using tap water can really affect the taste of your tea and at times make it a very undrinkable Brew.
So there are two basic types of water that you want to try and use for every cup of fennel tea. First, good-quality bottled spring water is going to be an excellent choice for making a cup of tea. Good spring water will have a balanced pH without a lot of metals or minerals in it that can affect the taste.
This is one of the reasons why you don’t want to use mineral water is because those minerals and metals do affect the flavor of your fennel tea. The second option is to filter your tap water before boiling it. A good filter will work wonders in taking out a lot of the flavors, metals, and minerals that can affect the overall taste of your fennel tea.
But you don’t want your water to be distilled. Using distilled water can lead to a very flat tasting team and one that doesn’t have the full flavor that you would expect from a fennel tea. In short, use filtered tap water or good quality bottled spring water. You can’t go wrong with either of these and they will absolutely improve the taste of your fennel tea.
What Is The Ideal Water Temperature For Fennel Tea?
Like most seed herbal teas, fennel seed tea needs a pretty high water temperature in order to draw out the flavors of the seeds. For most herbal infusions and true teas, you want to avoid using boiling water because it can scorch your leaves and turn your tea much more bitter than it should be.
But for seed teas you can get away with using very hot water, even boiling water to really draw out the flavors. They’re very similar to root teas in the sense. It’s very tough to over steep them or burn them with overly hot water. For fennel tea, I recommend using boiling water (212°F/100°C). Pour the boiling water into your cup and then drop in your fennel tea bag or the or some loose fennel seeds.
I always cover my tea when I steep it. I think it’s incredibly important to get the best flavor out of your tea to steep it covered. The two reasons for this are one it traps the heat in which keeps your water temperature more consistent instead of gradually diminishing over time.
For seed tea, you’re going to need to have a pretty long steep so you’re going to want to maintain that water temperature as long as you can. The second reason is all that flavor that could escape with the steam gets trapped and pushed back into the tea. I think it adds to the overall flavor of the tea making it much more enjoyable.
How Long Should You Steep Fennel Seed Tea For?
The amount of time you steep fennel tea is an incredibly important part of the overall flavor of the tea once it’s completed. Some green teas only need to be steep for 45 seconds and steeping it any longer than that can really affect the flavor of the tea in a negative way.
On the flip side of things seed teas to take a much longer steep than most other teas. While most herbal teas take longer than true teas steep, seed teas and root herbal teas tend to take the longest to steep properly in my experience.
For a hearty robust seed tea like fennel, you are going to want a good long steep of at least 7 minutes in my opinion. The Steep time can always be adjusted up or down to give you the flavor that you want for your cup of tea. But I find that 7 minutes is a good starting point for a bagged fennel tea.
It’s not uncommon for many people to go as long as 10, 15 and even 20 minutes in the steeping process for fennel tea. I will add that if you using loose fennel seed you probably want to extend that steep time a little bit longer.
So for loose seed fennel, I would start at 10 minutes and then work my way up or down from there depending on your individual taste.
How Much Fennel Seed?
The amount of fennel seed that you want to use is around two teaspoons if you using loose fennel seeds. The amount stays the same whether you are using whole fennel seeds or whether you grind up the seeds in a mortar and pestle before infusing it in the water.
I always find that it’s much easier to use bagged tea when dealing with seed teas like fennel tea. But it always comes down to personal preference. One tea bag of fennel tea should be plenty to give your water enough flavor in a typical size cup. However, this comes down to personal preference and I know many people who use two tea bags for a regular cup of tea.
For my personal experience that’s way too much flavor for that amount of water but whatever works for you. Remember it’s your cup of tea and you’re the only one that matters when it comes the taste of it.
Tea Steeping Instructions Quick Recap
- Use good quality spring water or filtered tap water
- A boiling water temperature (212°F/100°C) is fine for fennel tea
- One fennel tea bag or about 2 teaspoons of whole or ground fennel seeds for a typical 8 to 10oz cup.
- At least a good 10 minute steep but you should experiment to find your perfect steep time
What Does Fennel Tea Taste Like?
If you’re at all familiar with Italian sausage or a good marinara sauce and you are definitely familiar with fennel seed. Fennel is an integral part of many great dishes around the world and that wonderful flavor of the fennel seed is imparted into the fennel tea when you infuse it in water.
So let’s take a little look at the overall flavor profile of fennel tea to give you a better idea of what to expect from this wonderful seed herbal tea.
A Subtle Licorice Is The Main Flavor Of Fennel Tea
I think the first flavor that you’re going to taste from your fennel tea is the subtle licorice flavor. It’s certainly not as strong as a true licorice root tea but it is very noticeable and really underpins the entire flavor experience.
I would like in it more to anise seed tea then I went to licorice root tea. Both of the seed teas have a slightly more subtle licorice flavor than the true licorice tea. I think the one important thing to add about this is that it is not an overwhelming licorice flavor.
A lot of times licorice can be quite potent and turns people off if you’re not familiar with the flavor or you don’t like the flavor. However and fennel seed it’s subtle enough that I think anyone can enjoy it regardless of how they feel about licorice in general.
When the licorice flavor combines in fennel seed tea with some of the other flavors it really makes an overall wonderful experience for beginning tea Drinkers and advanced tea drinkers alike.
Fennel Tea Has A Subtly Earthy Undertone
The next flavor that I want to point out in your fennel tea is the underlying earthy flavor. I always find it very difficult to describe earthy as a flavor. It certainly doesn’t taste like dirt but it does have a certain flavor or aroma of freshly tilled earth.
Most herbal infusions have a bit of earthy flavor to them. in regards to fennel tea, it’s a pretty subtle earthy flavor that might be tough to detect for some more inexperienced tea drinkers. And if you do taste the earthy notes and it might be tough to describe. It’s just an underlying flavor that really acts as a base for the other flavors to interact with.
Fennel Tea Is Incredibly Smooth
A lot of herbal teas, especially flower herbal teas, have a bit of an after taste to them. Meaning the overall drinking experience isn’t as smooth as it could be. I found this is due to the floral nature of many of the flower teas.
That is not the case with fennel tea and indeed with most of the herbal seed teas is that I’ve tried. I find them to be incredibly smooth and very drinkable with very little bitterness in the aftertaste. Fennel seed tea falls right in line with the other seed teas. It’s a wonderfully smooth finish when you drink this tea. It reminds me of fenugreek tea and anise tea in terms of how smooth and drinkable these seed teas are.
Fennel Tea Has a Light Taste
Another aspect of fennel tea is that it is a pretty light tea to drink. It’s one of the lightest seed teas that I have tried. None of the flavors are particularly overwhelming. So it creates a nice light, subtle drinkability that is great for any level of tea drinker.
In fact, if I were going to introduce someone to seed teas then I would probably choose fennel tea as the first one for them to try because it is so light and drinkable. When you compare it to something like fenugreek tea, which has a pretty strong maple flavor, fennel provides you with a nice light cup of tea without having to worry about overwhelming the tea drinker.
Fennel Tea Slightly Sweet
Here’s the interesting thing about these flavor profiles for any type of tea. Some of the flavors are going to be more pronounced for individual tea drinkers than they are for others.
In the case of fennel tea, I detect a very slight sweetness to the overall flavor of the tea. However, I know people who can’t taste the sweetness in it at all.
I think it may have to do with the fact that I don’t drink anything with sugar in it so I’m a little more susceptible to tasting the subtle sweet flavors in a lot of these herbal teas.
So for me, I find that there is a nice subtle sweetness to fennel tea. You might not feel the same and you might not be able to taste it. But that’s okay because I could just be Imagining the whole thing and you could be the one that’s right about it.
Taste is always going to be a kind of a personal thing, to begin with, so I’m just trying to give you a broad look at the taste of fennel tea. To get a really accurate picture of what fennel tea taste like to you you’re going to have to grab some and decide for yourself
The Aroma Of Fennel Tea
I find the aroma fennel tea to be a little bit stronger than the actual taste. While the flavor of the tea is light and subtle with licorice and an earthy base. The aroma seems to be much more potent. the smell of fennel tea can really liven up a room because it is so strong.
This sometimes happens, especially with herbal teas. the aroma of the T is sometimes a little bit different or a little bit stronger or weaker than the actual Taste of the tea.
I find this to be a common occurrence with herbal flower teas. Where the smell of the tea is very floral but when you finally get around drinking the tea it’s quite a bit less flowery than you would expect.
This is the same kind of thing for fennel tea. When you smell it you expect it’s going to be this really robust and strong flavor but it is, in reality, a fairly light and subtle tea which makes it more appealing to a larger audience I think.
5 Great Fennel Tea Blend Ideas
One of the great things about tea and general is that it is endlessly customizable. And one of the great ways to craft your own flavor combinations is to blend different teas together.
The issue that I have with many seed teas is it they are pretty difficult to find something suitable to blend with. I find that they don’t pair well with most Floral herbal teas.
They tend to fare better with root teas but not universally. So the best Blends that I have found with fennel tea tend to be with other seed teas.
The best way to craft these Blends is to use loose seeds and simply split the amount of each one. I think a 50-50 split is going to be fine for most of them however there are exceptions. Here are five of my favorite fennel tea blends that you can craft for yourself.
Fennel And Anise Tea
This might be the most logical blend that you can make with fennel tea. Fennel and anise tea have a very similar flavor profile. Anise tea tends to be a little bit stronger than fennel tea but they both have the same licorice flavor from the anethole they contain(source).
Essentially this blend tends to amplify the licorice flavor of the fennel tea and make it a little bit stronger for someone that wants that type of more robust flavor.
Fenugreek And Fennel Tea
Another great blend for fennel tea is to mix it with fenugreek tea. The licorice flavor of the fennel Blends beautifully with the maple leaf flavor of the fenugreek tea.
Putting the two together gives you one of the smoothest and most drinkable seed tea blends that you could possibly imagine. The slight sweetness of each of these teas makes for a very pleasurable drinking experience and one that I urge everyone to try.
Coriander Cumin And Fennel Seed Tea
This is probably the most popular and recognizable blend of fennel tea. Using Coriander, cumin and fennel in an herbal infusion has been around for a long time and is incredibly popular in India and other parts of Western Asia.
You can easily find CCF tea, as it is sometimes called, in many tea shops around the world because it is so popular. This blend is also a key part of the Ayurvedic health practices developed in India 5000 years ago. The popularity of this tea blend persists to this day.
Here is a great example of this CCF tea blend. You can find Banyan Botanicals CCF Tea(*affiliate link) on Amazon.
Fennel And Licorice Tea
This is less of a fennel tea blend in more of a licorice root blend. The reason for that is the licorice root is going to really overpower the flavor of the fennel tea. It doesn’t completely wipe it out but it does really take on more of the flavor profile of a licorice root tea.
The fennel does add a nice bit of sweetness to the blend and does smooth out the overall taste a little bit. Out of all the blends on this list, this is going to be the least impressive in terms of fennel tea. But it is a very common blend so I thought I would add it to the list.
Chamomile And Fennel Tea
This one might seem a little bit odd because typically seed teas don’t blend really well with flower herbal teas. At least in my opinion. I think an exception can be made for chamomile because it is such a mild-flavored tea. Some would even go so far as to call chamomile tea bland.
So adding fennel seed to it gives it a nice licorice a flavor that does tend to overpower the subtle chamomile flavors but you can still taste a hint of the floral notes from the Chamomile.
I think the best thing about this plant is that it Smooths out the chamomile tea quite well and makes it a little bit more drinkable and makes the aftertaste a bit smoother. This is also a great tea to drink right before bed as chamomile tends to relax the drinker.
5 Amazing Benefits Of Fennel Tea
Like most herbal teas, fennel tea has a large number of health benefits that you get from drinking this wonderful herbal infusion. I decided to pick five of the most important benefits to give you an idea of just how incredibly beneficial this tea can be when you drink it on a regular basis.
1. Fennel Tea May Promote Heart Health
Fennel seeds contain essential ingredients that are known to help with overall heart health. Fennel contains good amounts of calcium, potassium, and magnesium(source). These minerals are known to help with your overall heart health when combined with a healthy diet(source).
Fennel seeds are also high in dietary fiber. Studies suggest that increasing your dietary fiber intake may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
2. Fennel Seed Tea May Help You Relax
Fennel has antispasmodic and muscle-relaxing effects that may help you relax after drinking a nice cup of fennel tea. This makes fennel tea a great tea to drink before bedtime as it could help aid in the quality of your sleep due to its relaxing effects.
3. Fennel Tea and Diabetes
One of the most obvious benefits of fennel tea when it comes to controlling your diabetes is that it contains no sugar or calories. It is important that you don’t add additional sugars to your diet by drinking sugary drinks when you are dealing with diabetes.
There is also evidence that the fennel seed essential oil had some beneficial effects and shows promise as an anti-diabetic agent(source).
4. Fennel Tea And Weight Loss
Right off the bat fennel tea would make a great substitute for any sugary beverage just because it has no sugar or calories. That alone will benefit weight loss since you are not adding calories through your beverages.
Another factor that may link fennel tea and weight loss are that it might act as a hunger suppressant. The dietary fiber found in the seeds might help fight hunger over short periods of time(source).
5. Fennel Tea Has Loads Of Anti-oxidants
Many herbal teas have loads of antioxidants and fennel tea is no exception. Antioxidants help destroy free radicals and can benefit your body in numerous ways. Studies have shown Incredible benefits of an antioxidant-rich diet and fennel tea can help add more antioxidants into your diet.
While nowhere near comprehensive, many studies have shown that eating high-vegetable, high antioxidant diets can help slow cell damage caused by free radicals(source).
Side Effects Of Fennel Tea
Fennel is generally pretty safe when infusing it in water. Fennel allergies are rare but can be an issue if you are allergic to the plant or any of its related cousins, like carrots and celery(source).
As with any herbal tea be sure to check with your doctor if you have any preexisting condition or are pregnant just to be on the safe side when it comes to drinking this herbal infusion.
Frequently Asked Questions About Fennel Tea
Here are some of the most frequently asked questions that I get about fennel tea That I haven’t already addressed in the other section of this article.
These are pretty common questions for a variety of herbal teas. I think most people want to try and figure out the differences between real teas and herbal teas so these questions tend to pop up quite a bit. Let’s have a look.
Does Fennel Tea Contain Sugar?
Fennel seed tea does not have any sugar in it. Well, it does have a subtle sweetness in the overall flavor profile. There is no sugar in the actual tea. Having no sugar makes it ideal for just about any kind of diet where you want to limit your sugar intake from beverages.
Trying to drink all your beverages is sugar-free is really a great idea and can really help you shave off those extra sources of sugar in your overall diet.
Does Fennel Tea Have Calories?
Fennel team does not have any noticeable calories in it. Technically there may be a calorie or so in the tea but it’s not enough to really be of any concern. In fact, most fennel seed teas will have zero calories on their nutritional information because they don’t meet the threshold it requires them to put calories on the nutritional info.
While there may be a negligible amount of calories it’s not something that you should worry about and not something that is really going to affect your overall diet in any way.
Does Fennel Tea Have Caffeine?
Fennel tea is naturally caffeine-free. Fennel tea is an herbal infusion and not a true tea and therefore doesn’t have any caffeine in it naturally. Caffeine can be beneficial in some instances but it can also be detrimental when used in excess. So it’s always a good idea to limit your caffeine intake.
That means if you’re a tea drinker and you’re sticking to green and black and white tea all the time you’re going to be in taking a lot of caffeine. Herbal teas like fennel are a great way to mitigate a little bit of that caffeine intake by choosing an herbal tea that has no caffeine.
Does Fennel Tea Break a Fast?
Fennel tea does not break a fast. It has no calories so it should not pull you out of your fasted state. There’s a school of thought however that says that anything other than water will break a fast. So there is still some debate about whether or not any type of tea or coffee will break you out of a fast.
But the generally accepted sentiment is that herbal teas like fennel won’t break your fast and are just fine to drink when you’re in your fasted state.
Does Fennel Tea Have Any Carbs?
Fennel tea does not have any carbs in it. Or at least the amount of carbs is net negligible similar to the way that the calories in fennel tea are counted. Well, there might be some negligible carbohydrates in the infusion it’s not enough to worry about at all.
The important aspect of not having any carbs is it that makes it a great option for anyone on a low-carb diet that wants to avoid any excess carbs. Often times you can wreck your entire diet by just drinking one sugary high carb drink and it’s not something you have to worry about with fennel tea.
Is Fennel Tea Keto Friendly?
Dovetailing off the fact that fennel tea has no carbohydrates it would make sense that fennel would make a great option for anyone on a keto diet. The Keto diet is notoriously strict on the number of carbohydrates that you can intake during any given period of time.
You really need to keep your carb intake to almost zero or as close to it as possibly can to really get the benefits of your body going into ketosis. Therefore fennel tea and really any herbal infusion is going to be a great option for you if you are on a keto diet.
The Fennel Tea Finish
That brings us to the end of our look at fennel seed tea. This remarkable seed herbal infusion is something that I think every tea drinker needs to try out at least once.
It has a very nice and smooth flavor and is really a great entry point for anyone looking to get into herbal seed teas. I think fennel tea is much more approachable than many of the flower herbal teas and indeed most of the seed herbal teas as well.
While fennel tea isn’t as renowned or well known as chamomile or lavender tea. It’s an herbal infusion that is starting to gain some notoriety because the fennel seed itself is such a beloved spice that use for a wide variety of fantastic dishes.
So I urge you to try some fennel tea and see what you think about it. Use the steps laid out in the “how to make section” to be sure that you get the best cup of tea that you possibly can. The see if fennel seed tea is something that you might want to add to your tea drinking repertoire.
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day.