Orange Tea

Delicate, aromatic, cozy, and just a little bit sweet, fragrant orange tea is infused with the sunshiny essence of orange with a hint of cinnamon. Keep oranges and cinnamon sticks on hand through back to school and the chilly months. Fight cold and flu season the tasty way!

Orange Peel Tea

Everyone knows that oranges are incredibly good for you. They’re packed with Vitamin C and are excellent sources of potassium, folate, and dietary fiber.

And that’s just the inside of the orange! If orange flesh is a nutritional powerhouse, orange peels are a nutritional juggernaut.

Orange peel packs 3 times the Vitamin C, 4 times the dietary fiber of orange flesh. It’s also provides provitamin A, folate, riboflavin, thiamine, vitamin B6, calcium, polyphenols, and limonene. Not only that, but oranges are a natural decongestant!

While that’s all marvelous, it wouldn’t matter much if oranges weren’t also delicious. Mercifully, they are divine.

I acknowledge that I’m often the odd man out on this next item, but I actually like to nibble on orange peel. Not all orange peel, mind you. It depends on the variety of the orange.

Orange Tea

Even though I like to nibble on cara cara and blood orange peels, I know most folks find them bitter to the point of unpalatability. Here is where orange tea enters the chat.

You can either make it with fresh orange peels removed from an orange or you can make it my way; slice half of an orange and infuse the flesh and peel both. This method harnesses both the powerful orange oils in the peel and the exquisitely fragrant sweetness of the orange flesh.

Plus -and feel free to laugh at me here- it’s easier. Who couldn’t use a little more ease in their life?

But really, it’s so easy, it’s so tasty, it’s so good for you. What’s not to love?

Tisane vs. Tea

There are two types of folks reading this right now. The ones who are saying “THAT IS NOT A TEA!” and those who are saying “What in the world is a tisane?”

So let’s address the etymological elephant in the room. We have a tendency to call all hot water infusions “tea”. That’s not strictly accurate.

To simplify things, tea is made by pouring hot water over fresh or cured leaves of the Camellius sinensis. Everything else is a tisane.

That’s right. Herbal teas? They’re not tea. They’re tisanes.

Tisanes are categorized by what is used to infuse the water. The type of tisane describes the ingredients pretty closely. Leaf tisanes are made of leaves like rosemary, mint, verbena, or lemongrass. Chamomile, rose, and hibiscus are common flower tisanes. Ginger makes a root tisane.

Fruit tisanes are infusions of oranges, apples, berries, peaches, and other fruits or berries. Some great bark tisanes are cinnamon and slippery elm; and so on and so forth…

Tisanes are a great way to extract flavour and water soluble vitamins; chief among them being Vitamin C, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), vitamin B6, biotin (B7), folate (B9), and vitamin B12.

And there’s no reason to restrict your tisane or tea to one category. I find that this orange tea is lovely when stirred with a sprig of fresh rosemary.

Rosemary even brings added health benefits to the party. It’s anti-inflammatory, promotes immune function, contributes to healthy skin and hair, and promotes respiratory function, among other things!