Samovar

A self-boiling urn: tea concentrate kept hot while a whole afternoon pours from the same fire.

Also called самовар · From Persia, Russia, and the Turkish tea table

A brass samovar with a teapot on top, glasses of tea, and a bowl of sugar.

The journey

A samovar is a chimney of water around a fire, with a teapot of zavarka sitting on top. Russian, Persian, and some Turkish houses still keep one so tea never has to be remade from scratch. The urn is furniture and hearth at once.

A kettle boils and dies. A samovar stays.

An 1818 map of Poland and neighboring lands — kitchens that still keep a samovar lit. — John Pinkerton, map of Poland (1818) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Brew a strong concentrate in the top pot. Dilute each glass from the urn. Keep the fire or the electric coil honest, not furious.

Persian and Eastern European pages in the series treat this urn as the afternoon. Turkish tea has its own stack; this is the older cousin.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

Find a samovar on Amazon