There's green tea (yum). There's powdered instant drinks (hurl). And then there's matcha, the green tea powder that makes a grassalicious instant drink.
Major. Green. Love.
First of all, the color. It's the milky-soft lime green of green tea ice cream (which is made with matcha, obvy), a shade so appealing we wish we could apply it to our walls. Whisk a packet into a mug of hot soy milk, and your new favorite drink sports shades of limey fields.
Then, the taste. Matcha is both sweet and grassy, with the pleasantly leafy taste of, again, green tea ice cream, especially when you mix it up in something sweet. The flavor is deep and concentrated, so don't overpowder or you'll end up bitter. We find it an excellent complement to steamed milk; vanilla ice cream is a good bet, too.
Plus, matcha packs nutrition up the wazoo. Because the tea bushes are covered during the final weeks pre-harvest, slowing their growth, they bulk up on amino acids. And because you consume the entire leaf (sans stem and veins), you're looking at a much higher anti-oxidant count than you find in brewed green tea.
Final feather in matcha's cap? There's a gentle, mind-sharpening dose of caffeine—but no crash.
The folks over at Rishi tea travel thousands of miles to find artisan matcha. They not only sell it; they also tell you how to prepare it. So powder up.