Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Hi - the tea strainers are pretty tall (almost as tall as your tea cup), so you can pour the water into the strainer in the cup and the water level will be beneath the top of the strainer. So the tea will brew, but the seeds won't float out of the strainer. They'll be under water and steeping just fine, but they'll stay in the strainer unless you pour in so much water that you overflow the strainer itself.

Pouring boiling water over the tea/fennel isn't the same as actually bringing a pot of water to boil, adding the tea/fennel, and continuing to boil it. The heat from the water is what will release the volatile oils - so that's why adding boiling water to your cup is what you want. But if you kept the fennel (or any other herbal tea) in a pot of water and just kept the whole thing boiling, that prolonged heat would dissipate all of the volatile oils and you'd lose the benefits.

I actually only mention the non-boiling thing because someone had written to me to say they were bringing a saucepan to boil on the stove, adding the fennel, and letting the whole pot boil away. Just think of the fennel seeds as a tea bag. You wouldn't brew tea by boiling a tea bag in a pot of water - you'd just pour boiling water over it into a cup. Same thing with the fennel, or any loose herbs. You don't want to COOK them - you just want to brew them.

Does that help?

- H

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Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

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