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Cookware · Hearths

Berrad

A swan-necked teapot: gunpowder tea, mint, and the pour that is a Moroccan welcome.

Also called berrad teapot, berrad · From Morocco

A silver Moroccan berrad with its hinged lid tilted open but still attached, mint, sugar, and two tea glasses.

The journey

Mint tea is not a footnote in a Moroccan house. It is the first thing poured and the last. The berrad — a metal pot with a long spout — is how the tea is boiled with sugar and fresh mint, then poured from a height so the glass wears a foam.

The gesture traveled with the tea itself: Chinese gunpowder leaf, Maghrebi mint, and a pot shaped for a courtyard.

The Catalan Atlas charting the Maghreb — the country whose welcome is still a pour of mint tea.
Abraham Cresques, Atlas català (1375), Bibliothèque nationale de France · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Rinse the leaves. Boil with sugar. Add a fist of mint. Pour high into small glasses and back into the pot once, then serve.

The Moroccan volume treats tea as furniture. A kettle can heat water. The berrad is the ceremony.

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