Mulethi Tea: Licorice Root, Made Carefully
Mulethi is licorice root, the sweet woody stick sold in every attar shop and pansari’s in the subcontinent. It makes a beautiful, honey-sweet tea, and of all the drinks in this series it is the one you must be most careful with.
At a glance
- Makes: 1 cup (about 200 ml)
- Takes: 10 minutes
- Traditionally drunk: occasionally, not daily, usually when someone’s voice has gone hoarse, in small cups
- Go easy if: you have high blood pressure, heart or kidney problems, take any regular medication, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or you were planning to drink this every day. Read the caution block before you make it.
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Read this before the recipe
Most spice drinks are food. You can drink cardamom tea daily for forty years and nothing much happens. Mulethi is not in that category, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not looked into it.
Licorice root contains glycyrrhizin, which is what makes it taste sweet. In regular amounts over a sustained period, glycyrrhizin is well documented as affecting the body’s handling of sodium and potassium. In plain terms, it can push potassium levels down and blood pressure up. This is not a fringe concern or a modern over-caution. Food safety bodies in Europe and elsewhere have published advice limiting regular licorice intake for exactly this reason, and doctors see cases of low potassium in people who have been eating licorice sweets or drinking licorice tea daily for weeks.
None of that makes it dangerous to have a cup. It does mean this is an occasional drink, in small amounts, with real limits, and not a daily habit. Traditional households treated it the same way: a stick of mulethi was something you reached for now and then, not something that lived in the everyday teapot. Anyone with high blood pressure, heart, kidney or liver problems, or anyone on regular medication, should talk to their own doctor before drinking it at all.
Where mulethi sits in the house
You buy it as dried root, either as pencil-thick sticks or as coarse yellow chips, from a pansari or a spice market. Children in old Delhi and Lahore used to chew the sticks like sweets. Singers and qawwals have long kept a piece in a pocket. It turns up in mixed spice blends, in paan shops, and in the sweet-shop world as a flavour.
As a drink it is simple: the root simmered in water, sometimes with a little ginger or cardamom, drunk hot in a small cup. People have long reached for it when a voice has gone hoarse or a throat feels rough from talking. That is the honest cultural picture. It is a soothing, sweet, warming cup and that is all anyone should claim for it.
What goes in
| Ingredient | Amount | Why it’s there |
|---|---|---|
| Water | 250 ml | You will simmer some off, leaving about 200 ml |
| Dried mulethi (licorice root), chopped or chips | 1 g only (roughly 1/2 tsp of chips, or a 3 cm piece of thin stick) | The sweetness and the whole flavour. Keep it small deliberately. |
| Fresh ginger | 2 thin slices (optional) | Cuts the syrupy sweetness |
| Green cardamom | 1 pod, crushed (optional) | Lifts the aroma |
| Fennel seeds | 1/4 tsp (optional) | A common partner, mild and aniseedy |
| Tulsi or mint leaves | 3 leaves (optional) | Freshness at the end |
| Lemon juice | 1/2 tsp, off the heat (optional) | Sharpens it if the sweetness is too much |
| Sweetener | None | Licorice is already intensely sweet. Adding sugar is a mistake. |
The method
The entire skill here is restraint. Small amount of root, short simmer, and stop. Over-steeped licorice goes from pleasantly sweet to cloying, slightly bitter and faintly chemical, and you are also extracting more of the thing you were being careful about.
- Measure the root properly. One gram. If you do not have a small scale, use a piece of thin stick about 3 cm long, or half a level teaspoon of chips. Do not eyeball a handful.
- If you are using a stick, bruise it with the flat of a knife or snap it into two or three pieces so the water can get in.
- Put 250 ml of cold water in a small pan with the mulethi, plus the ginger slices, cardamom pod and fennel if you are using them.
- Bring to a boil, then immediately turn it down to the barest simmer.
- Simmer gently, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Not ten. Not fifteen. Five. The water will go pale gold and smell sweet and slightly woody.
- Take it off the heat. Add the tulsi or mint leaves if you are using them and let them sit in the hot liquid for 1 minute, no longer.
- Strain into a cup through a fine sieve. You should have about 200 ml.
- Taste before you add anything. It will already be sweet. If it is too sweet, stir in half a teaspoon of lemon juice. Do not add sugar or honey.
One gram of root, five minutes, and then you stop. That last part is the recipe.
Variations, and the mistakes that spoil it
The common variations are all about balancing the sweetness. Ginger and mulethi is the classic pair. Fennel and mulethi is gentler. A pinch of black pepper appears in some households. Some people brew it very weak, with half the root, and treat it as a background note in a wider herbal mix rather than the main event, which is a sensible instinct.
The mistakes are worth listing plainly.
Using too much root. This is the number one error, and it is the one with actual consequences. A tablespoon of licorice chips in a mug is far too much.
Over-steeping. Leaving it on a low flame for twenty minutes while you do something else makes a dark, syrupy, unpleasant brew and pulls out far more than you wanted.
Adding sugar or honey. It is already sweet. Sweetening it makes it undrinkable and encourages you to use more root next time to get the flavour through.
Treating it as a daily tea. It is not one. Chamomile is a daily tea. Licorice is not.
Leaving the root in the cup. Strain it. Root sitting in hot liquid keeps extracting.
Old spice sellers will hand you a single stick rather than a bag, and there is wisdom in that packaging. A stick is a portion. Buy small quantities, keep them in a tin away from light, and replace them once a year. Root that has gone pale, dusty and smells of nothing has lost its point, and the temptation then is to use more of it, which is exactly the wrong direction.
How much, how often
Here is the part that matters most. A sensible serving is one small cup of about 200 ml, made with one gram of root. A sensible frequency is occasional: a cup now and then, perhaps two or three cups spread across a week at the very most, and then a clear break of several weeks.
Do not drink it every day. Do not drink it for weeks on end. The concern with licorice is specifically about sustained regular intake rather than a single cup, so short, occasional use with real gaps is the pattern to keep. If you find yourself reaching for it daily, stop and switch to something else. There are half a dozen other drinks in this series that are genuinely everyday drinks, and this is not one of them.
Remember too that licorice is in other things. Licorice sweets, some mixed herbal tea blends, some digestive mixtures and some paan preparations all contain it. If you are eating those, they count.
Do not drink licorice root tea at all if you have high blood pressure, heart disease, heart rhythm problems, kidney disease or liver disease, or if you have ever been told your potassium runs low, unless your own doctor has specifically said it is fine for you. Avoid it in pregnancy: licorice in pregnancy is one of the clearer cautions in the herbal world, and it is not worth any risk. Avoid it while breastfeeding. Do not give it to children as a tea, and discourage children from chewing large amounts of the stick. Be particularly careful if you take diuretics (water tablets), blood pressure medication, digoxin, corticosteroids, or any medication where potassium level matters, because licorice can interact with all of these. If you take blood thinners or diabetes medication, or any regular medication at all, ask your own doctor first. Signs that someone has overdone licorice include swelling in the hands, feet or face, headaches, unusual muscle weakness or cramps, tiredness and a rise in blood pressure. If any of those appear, stop drinking it and see a doctor. And to be completely clear: this is food and tradition writing by a cook, not medical advice, and no drink here treats, prevents or manages any condition.
Leftovers and reheating
Do not make a big jug of this. The whole point of the recipe above is that it is a single, measured cup, and having a litre of it in the fridge makes it far too easy to drink more than you meant to.
If you do have half a cup left, cover it, refrigerate it and drink it the same day, or throw it out. Reheat gently to just hot, never back to a simmer, because further heating will keep concentrating it. Never top up a used pan with fresh water and re-simmer the same root for a second cup: it looks thrifty and it makes a much stronger, murkier brew than you intend.
Try this this week
Weigh one gram of licorice root on a kitchen scale, look at it, and then look at how much you would have guessed. Most people guess three or four times too much. That one look recalibrates you permanently, and it is the single most useful thing you can do with this ingredient.
If you want an everyday drink instead
Honestly, for most people most of the time, the answer is one of the others. Adrak tulsi chai covers the same warm, soothing, scratchy-throat moment and is a proper everyday drink. Haldi doodh is the bedtime one. If it is after dinner and you just want something warm, the saunf and ajwain jug is made for that. Browse the rest under Desi Remedies.
Is deglycyrrhizinated licorice the same thing?
No. DGL is a processed product with the glycyrrhizin largely removed, sold as a supplement. It is a different thing from the root you simmer in your kitchen, it is not what this article is about, and supplements of any kind are a conversation for your doctor rather than a cook.
How often is genuinely too often?
Daily, for weeks, is too often, and that is the pattern associated with problems. Occasional cups with clear gaps is the traditional pattern and the sensible one. If in doubt, drink it less.
Can I mix mulethi into my regular masala chai?
People do, but it means you lose track of how much you are having, because chai gets drunk several times a day out of habit. If you want it in a blend, make that blend deliberately and occasionally rather than putting licorice into the tin you dip into every morning.
Why does mine taste bitter rather than sweet?
Too much root, too long a simmer, or old stale root. Cut the quantity, cut the time to five minutes, and buy fresh stock. Good mulethi water is sweet and clean, with a woody finish and no harshness at all.