Let’s face it – adding refined sugar to your healing herbal tea blend doesn’t make a lot of sense. But, if you’re like me, you want your tea experience to be as much of a treat as it is a blessing to your health. The good news is that there are many healthy and natural ways to sweeten your herbal tea without relying on refined sugar, synthetic sweeteners, or artificial flavors. Today, I’m going to introduce you to just a few wonderful things you can add to your favorite brew to satisfy your sweet tooth and transform even the most bitter of healing herbs!
What’s Sweet Got To Do With It?
I’m a big fan of healing with a smile. While some herbal tea blends are all medicine and no merry, I like to think that we can make even the most intensely ‘herby’ tasting blends at least a little more palatable. Adding sweeteners to your healing herbal tea can help bring out hidden flavors, reduce bitterness, even out the green taste many herbs have, and make the whole process far more enjoyable – which means you’ll keep coming back for more. There is zero guilt in wanting to have your tea taste good, so embrace these options and experiment to see which ones tantalize your tongue the most!
Local Honey
This timeless sweetener does something magical to herbal tea. Think about this: bees work with plants to create their honey, then we work with bees to add their honey to our plants. Talk about a cycle!
Honey is great at removing bitterness from herbs, and it also helps bring out floral notes in any tea that contains flowers.
Choosing local honey will help your immune system stay tough during seasonal allergy attacks, and its natural antibacterial nature will help keep you healthy.
Coconut Oil
Adding just a teaspoon or two of organic coconut oil to your favorite herbal tea blend will drastically change the experience. Coconut oil has a delicately sweet-yet-earthy flavor, and the natural plant fats it contains can actually make herb properties more available to your body’s tissues.
A little coconut oil goes a long way, but there’s no right way to do it. Start small and see what tastes right to you.
Coconut Water
I love using coconut water in my herbal tea – especially when it’s iced! You can add a splash to any light, floral, or sweet blends – or you can use straight coconut water as a base instead of water to create delicious cold herbal teas!
Agave Nectar
If you’re worried about glycemic index, agave has about half that of sugar or honey. It packs a punch of sweetness and can be used very sparingly. This amazing syrupy sweetener comes from the agave cactus and is one of the desert’s best kept secrets.
Stevia
Adding the tiniest pinch of whole stevia leaf herb to your herbal tea will bring the sweet with none of the guilt. Stevia is far more intense than refined sugar, so start with tiny pinches until you learn what tastes best to you.
Sweet Herbs
There are several other herbs that can be added to your tea blends for more sweetness. Here are a few of my personal favorites…
- Citrus Peels
- Hibiscus Flower
- Licorice Root
- Lemongrass
- Lemon Verbena
- Honeybush
These herbal sweeteners can be used in hot or iced tea, and can be added to any medicinal blend to add ‘joy’ to the list of healing benefits you get from drinking it!
Enjoy!
