/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>15374100
What do you consider "western style"? Black and herbal teas are steeped or boiled at high temperature, gyokuro and sencha are not. Boiling is 100c, post-boiling water is around 90c which is where you would steep most English teas.
I use this kettle. It has an outer pitcher and an inner filter, the filter is removable. I heat the water for 5-10 minutes with the filter out (the "keep warm" feature brings the water to 70c and then keeps it there like a sous vide), then I put the tea leaves in the filter and put the filter into the pitcher. I don't need a strainer, tea ball, or bags this way, but you could use a tea ball instead if you don't have a filter-type pitcher.
You don't need "large amounts of leaves," an oolong-type tea might require a tablespoon of leaves for one cup that you could reuse 5-6 times, but green tea leaves are one teaspoon to one cup, one brew only. You could keep the leaves in there for over an hour if you wanted, but I'd recommend just steeping for 5 to 10 minutes and then drinking straight away. We usually make our tea on weekends and sip it for 30 or 40 minutes after it's steeped, and it's still just as good on the last cup. The magic of sous vide is that it'll never exceed the key temp of 70c.