Yuja Tea

Yuja has a powerful fragrance, but its sharp acidity and many seeds make it less suited to eating fresh like ordinary fruit. Instead, people commonly sliced it thinly, peel and all, and preserved it in sugar or honey. The resulting yuja-cheong, a sweet yuja preserve, keeps well and holds its aroma, so mixing it with water and drinking it like tea naturally became common.

Yuja is sensitive to cold, so it became especially well known along the southern coast and on the southern islands. Yuja Tea therefore also reflects a Korean style of preserved food: storing a fragrant fruit that was precious in winter, then bringing it out to drink.

On Korean cafe menus, Yuja Tea is often listed as “tea,” but it is often not brewed from tea leaves. The yuja-cheong tends to settle at the bottom of the cup, so stir once before drinking. If a spoon is served with it, you can scoop up and eat the remaining peel.

Good Yuja Tea does not taste only sweet; the aroma of yuja peel comes through first. Thin pieces of peel add texture as you chew, and the white pith can leave a very faint bitterness. Seeds can make the bitterness stronger if they get mixed in, so people generally prefer cheong made with the seeds removed.