At a neighborhood tea festival in January, a maker from Sayama set a frying pan on a portable burner and poured in a handful of green tea leaves. Nothing else — no oil, no water. Within two minutes the whole room smelled toasted and sweet, and people who had walked past his table turned around and came back.
That is the entire recipe. Green tea becomes hojicha in about the time it takes to boil a kettle — and the tea you use can be fresh, or the tin at the back of your cupboard that has lost some of its brightness.
One small batch · A few minutes of roasting, plus cooling
What you’ll need
- 3–4 tablespoons of loose green tea — sencha, bancha, stem tea, or Miyanoen’s HOUJI-GEN for home roasting.
- A clean, dry frying pan.
- A wooden spoon or spatula, and a plate for cooling.
Use a small enough batch to spread the tea in a thin layer across the pan.
If your tea is a mix of fine pieces and larger stems, it helps to sift them apart first. Put the stems in the pan, and stir in the finer pieces partway through — roasted together from the start, the fine pieces color much faster and can turn dark before the stems are ready. Miyanoen’s HOUJI-GEN skips this step for you: it is stem tea chosen specifically for roasting into hojicha, not simply whatever was left unroasted, and it comes already sorted to a size that roasts evenly.
How to make it
- Place the tea in a clean, dry frying pan over medium-low heat. Use no oil or water, and leave the pan uncovered.
- Spread the tea in a thin layer. Keep it moving gently by shaking the pan or stirring with a wooden spoon.
- Over the next few minutes, watch the color deepen and enjoy the toasted fragrance as it develops. The timing will vary with your tea, pan, and heat.
- When the tea reaches a shade and aroma you enjoy, immediately tip it onto a cool plate. The hot pan will keep roasting the tea even after the heat is off.
- Let it cool completely before brewing. Start with about 3g of roasted tea per 150ml of water just off the boil. Steep for around 30 seconds, then pour out all the tea. A little more tea makes a fuller cup; a little less, something lighter.
Three roasts, three different teas
The maker at that festival had three tins lined up, and tasting them side by side made the differences easy to appreciate.
Light — a gentle toasted aroma, with more of the green tea’s freshness remaining.
Medium — a rounder, nuttier fragrance and a fuller roasted flavor.
Deep — a stronger toasted aroma, sometimes with notes reminiscent of coffee. Keep the tea moving and transfer it to a plate before it scorches.
Roast a little at a time and enjoy the differences. A lighter cup may suit one afternoon, a deeper roast another.
Another way to enjoy green tea
Green tea that has lost some of its fresh aroma can still make a lovely hojicha, provided it has been stored well and kept dry. As the leaves warm in the pan, a toasted fragrance develops — a different pleasure from the same tea.
Fresh tea works beautifully too. Gently stirring the leaves, watching their color deepen, and enjoying the fragrance can be a small, peaceful part of making your cup.
A note on the smell
Roast a pan before people arrive. One July afternoon we did this at the end of a long lunch with guests visiting from Denmark, almost as an afterthought, and the aroma did more for the room than anything else we served that day. In Japan hojicha is the tea that comes out after dinner — mild, warm, and not asking for attention.
