Chinese Sour Plum Drink (Suanmeitang)
An ancient Chinese drink drunk by royalty, this classic summer beverage remains popular even today thanks to its sweet-sour-salty-smokey taste! Reduced to its 3 most basic ingredients whilst keeping a great flavour so that everyone can make Chinese plum tea easily at home!
Servings: 4 people
Equipment
- Pot
- sieve
- Jar
Ingredients
- 3-5 Large Black Chinese preserved plum (wumei) This is just a guide- as each plum is quite big, you will probably not be able to get exactly 1.4 oz. Don't stress about cutting the plum to get the exact quantity- just use the whole thing even if it means the weight is more than 1.4 oz!
- 1 Cup spiced dried Chinese hawthorn As above. Rinse before adding to pot. If you like the drink more tart, add more hawthorn whilst keeping the other ingredients the same
- 3 Tablespoons White Granulated sugar Traditionally rock sugar is used, feel free to substitute with rock sugar if you have it. Rock sugar tastes less sweet than white so you may want to add a bit more. Alternatively, osmanthus sugar can also be used, as I did above. If not, to make plum tea with no sugar, use a neutral honey instead.
- 4 Cups Water (about 1 litre)
- Optional Garnishes: Dried osmanthus tea, to sprinkle on the plum tea before serving and put a new black Chinese plum in each cup for some texture Don't use a plum that's been boiled as it'll be very soft
- Other optional ingredients: Chinese licorice (gan cao), Chinese dried tangerine peel (chen pi- can substitute with orange peel, making sure no white pith remains), hibiscus tea, osmanthus tea, roselle tea etc Always check with your doctor before using Traditional Chinese Medicine ingredients, if you're not sure whether you can take them or pregnant
Instructions
- Rinse the hawthorn, add to the pot with the water and Chinese plums. Bring to the boil
- Reduce fire to medium (i use 5.5 on a Bosch induction stove which has a max of 9) so that the liquid is simmering. (You will see a few small bubbles.) Leave to simmer uncovered for 40 minutes.
- At the 30 min mark, taste and see if the tartness is to your liking. If so, add the sugar and stir till dissolved. (If not, leave till 40 min and taste again. Repeat till you like the taste then add the sugar.) Note that if you're using rock sugar, it comes in clumps, so you may have to increase the fire to help it dissolve into the plum tea. Also, the flavour changes after chilling/ adding ice- to me, suan mei tang tastes tarter cold.
- If drinking hot, sieve out the ingredientsportion out the tea then sprinkle some osmanthus flowers and add a new Chinese black plum to each cup (optional). If you prefer it cold, as I do, allow it to cool down with the ingredients steeping inside (this took me about 40 minutes) then sieve and pour the juice into a glass jar which goes into the fridge. As with the hot tea, add some osmanthus flowers and a fresh preserved plum to each cup before serving.
- Store for no more than 2-3 days in the fridge. If you see it going cloudy, toss it.
- Optional: you may want to freeze some of the plum tea juice in ice cube containers, so that you can use them to chill the plum tea. Using regular ice results in a diluted, watery drink
- The sieved out ingredients can be used to make a 2nd batch of tea (see post for directions) or to make puree/ jam. They can also be eaten but they'll be mushy.
Notes
Some recipes soak the ingredients first (it's said to reduce the smoky flavour but I don't find the smoky taste overpowering). I skip this but if you choose to do so, don't throw away the soaking water (or you'll be throwing out a lot of flavour). Rinse the ingredients, soak them then bring the ingredients to boil in the soaking water.
I use the ingredients (excluding water) in a 1:1:1 ratio (i.e. the ingredients are all of equal weight) but have included cup measurements above to make things easier. If you prefer a more mouth-puckering drink, increase the Chinese hawthorn. Obviously, for something sweeter, add more sweetener. (If you need a recipe for osmanthus sugar, here's the link.)
The simmering time is just a guide- I've used less time (30 min) and the tea tasted good but I prefer it stronger at 40 minutes. If you like the flavour even more in your face, increase the cooking time (or the ratio of ingredients to water)- you can even put this in a slow cooker, which is what a lot of street stalls which sell the drink do.