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Tea leaf from Myanmar

Lahpetလက်ဖက်

Young tea leaves are steamed or boiled, rolled and pressed under weight in a lined pit or tank for weeks to months, where naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria ferment them from green to golden-green. Lahpet is eaten as a salad, not brewed.

Fully documentedTea leaf14 days – 12 months

Recipe

Lahpet, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: ReflectedSerendipity from United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedTraditional process with no fixed batch size or recipe amounts in the sources used here. The cited process descriptions put only the rolled leaf into the pit or tank.
Young tea leaves and budsTender young leaves and leaf buds of Camellia sinensis are chosen for fermenting[thar2016][wp]
No starterNatural fermentation, with no external microbial inoculation added[kham2024]
Salt, oils, flavourings and nutsAdded by manufacturers to the finished pickled tea, after fermentation[thar2016]
Garlic, chilli, salt, lemon or lime juice, and peanut or sesame oilto tasteTo flavour the finished lahpet; Wikipedia lists minced garlic, ground chilli, salt, lemon juice and peanut oil, and the thesis names sesame oil in the lacquer tray and lime in the salad[wp][thar2016]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 14 days – 12 months

Start
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What changes: Starting material: young tea leaves and buds

Step 1 of 6
Pick the young flush
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria

Picked by hand in five picking seasons from mid-March to mid-November. The best leaf is the first harvest, from mid-March to early April. Output: young leaves and buds.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Young tea leaves are steamed or boiled, rolled and pressed under weight in a lined pit or tank for weeks to months, where naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria ferment them from green to golden-green. Lahpet is eaten as a salad, not brewed. Made in 6 steps over 14 days – 12 months. The longest step, pack into a lined pit and weigh down, takes 14 days – 12 months (Thar S.P. 2016). Lactobacillus and Acetobacter do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step14 days – 12 monthsReported[thar2016][kham2024][wp]Pack into a lined pit and weigh down
Temperature95–100 °CReported[kham2024]Steam or boil the leaves
AciditypH 4.4–4.7Measured[thar2016]Pack into a lined pit and weigh down

What makes this one different

Lahpet is one of the few teas that is eaten, not drunk. Unlike miang it is pressed in a pit or tank under weight, and the sources used here describe nothing added to the pit; the garlic, chilli, salt, citrus and oil come when it is seasoned.

Related ferments

Variants

  • A-hlu lahpet, MandalayServed on a lacquer tray with fried garnishes.
  • Zayan lahpetLahpet mixed with star fruit, with pickled young leaves cut together with coarse leaves.
  • Mogok lahpetMany prefer it because it uses only young tea leaves.
  • Pickled sun-dried green teaLow-quality pickled leaf put back under pressure in bags, tanks or pits for about six to seven months, then sun-dried and used for drinking; popular in Ayeyarwady.
  • Taw lahpet (Pyay)Fermented from the leaves of the naywe tree or of kyettet (Combretum pilosum), not tea, then soaked in regularly changed water for up to two years.

Made the lahpet way

Safety

Three finished brands tested pH 4.35, 4.45 and 4.7. New Zealand's Ministry of Primary Industries uses pH 4.6 as its limit for Clostridium botulinum, so the pH 4.7 brand could not legally have been used for taste testing there. The thesis adds that this brand had been held at room temperature since picking and had not had a full heat process against the bacterium. In 2009 Myanmar authorities found Auramine O, a dye not permitted in food, in 253 of 458 market samples; a retest of 667 samples that September was negative.

Hazards the sources name: Auramine O, a dye not permitted in food, found by Myanmar authorities in 253 of 458 market samples in 2009; Clostridium botulinum (precaution only; one of three imported brands had pH 4.7, above New Zealand's pH 4.6 limit).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Burmese folklore credits King Alaungsithu of Pagan (1112–1167) with giving tea seeds to the people. Wikipedia says lahpet was a symbolic peace offering between warring kingdoms before the colonial era, and was served after a civil court verdict to show acceptance of it. By the late 1700s tea was a significant export, largely grown in the Palaung principality of Tawngpeng. On 12 March 2009 Myanmar's Ministry of Health announced that 43 brands of lahpet contained Auramine O, a dye not permitted in food.

  1. [thar2016] Thar S.P. 2016, An exploratory value chain analysis for Burmese pickled tea (laphet), Massey University thesispaper
  2. [bo2020] Bo B., Kim S.-A. and Han N.S. 2020, Bacterial and fungal diversity in Laphet, traditional fermented tea leaves in Myanmar, analyzed by culturing, DNA amplicon-based sequencing, and PCR-DGGE methods, International Journal of Food Microbiology 320, 108508 (abstract)paper
  3. [act2022] Aye Chan Thu and Aye Aye Khaing 2022, Characterization of lactic acid bacteria isolates from pickled tea leaves (La-phet), University of Yangon Research Journal 11(2), pp. 385–394paper
  4. [kham2024] Kham N.N.N. et al. 2024, A thermotolerant yeast Cyberlindnera rhodanensis DK isolated from Laphet-so capable of extracellular thermostable β-glucosidase production, Journal of Fungi 10(4), 243paper
  5. [wp] Wikipedia, Lahpetwiki