Rosehip milk tea has a fragrant and delicate flavor that can make every sip feel like a garden party in your mouth!
In addition to being enjoyable, this fulfilling drink is bubbling with health benefits stemming from its rich antioxidants.
It’s time to learn why rosehip milk tea is the hip drink of the moment at bubble tea shops around the world.
What Is Rosehip Milk Tea?
Rosehip milk tea is a popular herbal tea made with the fruit of the rose plant. When looking just below a rose’s petals, you’ll find rosehips that resemble berries or small fruits.
Red and orange in color, rosehip is a little treasure bursting with flavor and health benefits!
Rosehip tea is not a new invention at all. In fact, this may be one of the oldest herbal teas made by humans for medicinal purposes.
Ancient Romans used rosehip tea as a cure for toothaches, dysentery, seizures, and toothaches. Rosehip is used to make a wide range of drinks that include rosehip black tea, rosehip green tea, hibiscus rosehip tea, and rosehip kombucha.
However, the talk of the town at the moment is rosehip milk tea. It’s a featured item at some trendy tea shops around the world.
So where exactly can you buy it?
Currently, the well-known Kung Fu Tea chain offers a delicious and fragrant rosehip bubble tea consisting of black tea and milk powder which help to round out the tartness of rosehip.
You may know milk tea simply as bubble tea. Rosehip milk tea is a chilled tea that’s often served with black tapioca pearls over ice.
While every tea shop puts its own spin on popular tea drinks, rosehip milk tea is traditionally made by combining rosehip syrup, extract, or powder with some kind of milk or powdered milk. Black tea is also commonly used to draw out the flavor of rosehip in bubble tea.
Just make sure you’re not confusing rosehip tea for rosebud tea. Regular rose teas use brewed rose petals while rosehip tea uses the fruit that is left once petals have fallen away from a rose plant.
Rosehip Tea Benefits
Rosehip is linked with a wide variety of health benefits.
First, the rich antioxidant content of rosehip makes this a healthy drink. When researchers compared rosehip to six other fruits known for robust antioxidant content, they found that rosehip had the highest antioxidant capacity!
There’s also something else to know about rosehip that’s pretty extraordinary. While we often look to citrus when we want a huge dose of vitamin C from a fruit, rosehip actually has some of the highest concentrations of vitamin C among all fruits and vegetables.
Vitamin C protects the body against infection by stimulating the production of our white blood cells. It also strengthens the skin’s barrier to keep bad pathogens out. The vitamin C in rosehip gets a boost in helping the immune system to thrive from high levels of vitamin A and vitamin E.
But can rosehip also help you to lose weight?
Yes, some recent research claims it can!
According to a study from 2013, rosehip extract inhibits lipid accumulation in white adipose tissue. In another study, researchers actually found that adults with excess weight who took 100 milligrams of rosehip extract daily for 12 weeks experienced decreased body weight and flatter stomachs compared to the placebo group.
Rosehip could even be powerful enough to provide protection against diabetes.
Finally, rosehip tea may be a secret beauty drink!
While the vitamin C in rosehip would be enough to put rosehip teas and extracts at the top of the list for anyone wanting vibrant skin, there’s actually a compound that’s unique to rosehip that brings things to the next level.
The high levels of carotenoid astaxanthin in rosehip help to prevent the breakdown of the collagen that is responsible for keeping skin firm and supple.
A 2015 study showed that people who consumed rosehip powder daily for eight weeks experienced reductions in crow’s feet and wrinkles. They also noticed that their skin had extra moisture and elasticity.
What Does Rosehip Milk Tea Taste Like?
Rosehip milk tea has a pleasant taste where the tart and fruity flavors of rosehip combine nicely with the smoothness of milk.
While the strong floral flavor of rosehips would lead one to believe that this tea would simply have an earthy, floral flavor, the truth is that the flavor of rosehip milk tea is far more complicated!
Yes, the floral and sweet notes are there. However, rosehip milk tea has a distinctly tart flavor that takes you by surprise.
Some people even describe the flavor that flows through rosehip tea as being similar to the taste of a tart green apple.
How to Make Rosehip Milk Tea
Don’t be sad if you don’t live near a great tea house. You can also make rosehip milk tea at home.
While there are several ways to add rosehip to tea, the recipe I’m sharing below uses dried rosehip.
Ingredients for 2 large portions:
- 2 teaspoons of dried rosehip
- 3 teaspoons of black, green, or oolong tea
- 400 milliliters of milk, oat milk, creamer, or your preferred alternative
- 3 tablespoons of boba tapioca pearls
- 2 teaspoons of sugar (or more if you like it very sweet)
Here’s how to prepare it:
- Boil 2 cups of water in a teapot or saucepan and add your dried rosehip to the water. Let it steep for up to 10 minutes covered.
- Next, add the tea before slowly stirring in the sugar. Stir in your preferred milk. Steep for about 2 to 3 minutes and strain to remove the tea leaves.
- Add tapioca pearls to a separate pot of hot water that is brought to a boil and cook for about 5 minutes until they start to float. Then remove the pearls from the hot water.
- Let the tea and the tapioca pearls cool down. Add plenty of ice into 2 large glasses, then add the boba pearls, and finally pour in the tea. Enjoy!
If you want to experiment, you can also create many variations of this recipe. For example, instead of black tapioca pearls, you can use flavored or clear ones.
Or why not combine rosehip with some other healthy ingredients like taro or cherry blossom?
Final Thoughts on Rosehip Milk Tea
Hearing about the benefits of rosehip makes you wonder why rosehip bubble tea isn’t being served on every street corner in the world!
This tea might be considered an acquired taste if you only like ultra-sweet bubble teas. While some people like to add sugar to their rosehip bubble tea, you’ll find that the natural floral-meets-tarty sweetness in this tea is often enough to satisfy your dessert urge.
So go ahead and give rosehip milk tea a try. It might become your new favorite!
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