A few weekends ago, we decided to take our one-year-old on a day trip to an apple orchard in the mountains. It was our first real family trip, and the main thing we learned is that road tripping with a toddler is tough. Somehow, an ETA of 10:00 am turned into 2:00 pm. It’s sort of the way I imagine an alien abduction, minus the aliens. Everyone comes to, finding the car is now in a completely different location. Mysteriously, four hours have passed. “How did we lose those four hours?!” you wonder, dazed. “And who put all these Cheerios in my hair?!”
The three of us finally arrived feeling a bit bedraggled, but it was totally worth it. As anyone who’s ever experienced a Blue Ridge summer could tell you, the weather was glorious. Our daughter loved seeing the apple trees and a butterfly garden. We sat on a porch overlooking the mountains, eating ice cream and watching barn swallows cut across the sky. And we walked away with a bag of one of my favorite apples, ginger gold! (If you’ve never had one, they’re typically sort of gingery-sweet and just a little tart.)
The next day, my sweet husband made us some homemade applesauce, which left me with the question: What do you do with all those peels? “TO THE INTERNET!” I exclaimed, and began Googling. The search result that really caught my eye was apple peel tea. As you could probably guess, it’s an herbal tea (or tisane) you can make by boiling apple peels.
I guess you could say that this is more of a method than a true recipe. Apple peel tea is super easy to make, and you can tailor the ingredients to suit your taste or whatever’s already in your kitchen. You can use whatever type of apples, spices, and sweetener you want! (For my favorite batch that we made, I put two whole cloves in the pot with the apple peels, and then added a bit of ground cinnamon and brown sugar to each mug of tea.) There’s no set quantity of apple peels to use, but at least a few handfuls’ worth would probably be best. (I made a cobbler recipe requiring 4 cups of chopped apple a few days later, and the peels yielded 2 mugs of tea.)
I LOVE making something out of what would normally be considered waste. When the end result is especially good, it feels like alchemy. In this case, apple peel tea turned out to be an awesome drink. We’re still in the throes of August as I’m writing this and, for a moment, those fall flavors were like a balm to my sun-scorched soul. It was an apple-y, spicy, sweet, aromatic hug in a mug. The leftover tea was refreshing cold from the fridge too!
Here’s how you can make some:
APPLE PEEL TEA
Put your apple peels in a sauce pot and cover with water. (If you’re feeling fancy, you could throw in a cinnamon stick and/or some whole cloves as well.) Simmer on the stove for 10 minutes. (I did not put the lid on the pot while cooking.) Strain the liquid and discard peels (or just ladle the liquid into mugs, being sure to avoid the solid stuff). Sweeten with sugar, honey, etc. Add a dash of ground cinnamon or whatever else you like. Enjoy!
Does apple peel tea sound like something you’d want to try? Let me know!
