Mint

You walk into school digging in your pockets for gum so you can be fresh despite not having brushed your teeth this morning. Life is seeming simple, until you realise that you don’t have your favourite spearmint flavour available. Bit of a rip. Don’t worry because the school and its local area is jam-packed full of lovely fresh flavours that are just ripe for the picking. Let me introduce my dear friend: mint. Not the artificial stuff you are probably thinking of, but the real thing; the herb. The green stuff. Now I’m sure you’re thinking ‘is this kid joking?’ I ain’t joking. Mint is a real thing and I have personally experienced its many wonders. I’m going to run you through your nearby minty options, discuss the science behind their flavours and give you some nifty facts to pocket.

Often when you think of mint you envision the cool, calm and collected taste that slowly tingles along your taste buds, giving your mouth that icy, washed-out-with-soap-in-a-good-way feel. It’s a possessive sort of flavour, one that bites back with a relentless cold when you drink water on top. This icy sensation is due to a chemical called menthol, which is found in natural oils. It stimulates nerve receptors on your skin and mucosa (the lining inside your mouth), triggering them to generate that cool feeling. Mints possess a higher concentration of this chemical than plants, which is why it is often considered to be the taste of ‘clean’. Spearmint, Peppermint, etc. all have this refreshing quality, which is why you rely on them so heavily when you forget to brush your teeth.​

At school the most easily obtainable mint is a type of Spearmint (Mentha Spicata), also known as Common Mint or Garden Mint. It has vivid emerald-green leaves which contrast with the moody purple of the stem. As its name suggests, it is the most common variety of the herb. It is a wonder in the kitchen, and can be used as a topping for curries, an ingredient in a salad or bit of colour on a chilled desert. Its versatility extends to both the savoury and sweet. Spearmint will grow almost anywhere, popping up in your backyard with the determined ferocity of a weed. Its favourite areas are moist and partially shady so don’t be surprised when some grows underneath your leaky garden tap. Quick tip: when your mint is flowering, cut the blooms off. This allows for the plant to put more energy towards producing bigger leaves, rather than flowers, which are a little less tasty. This applies for every kind of mint, so a useful fact for when you become a mint connoisseur.​

For a bit of a mix up, let’s take a look at this native type of mint called Native River Mint (Mentha Australis). Like most mints it likes to grow in damp areas, and more importantly it is native and if you wander down to the wetlands near the school you should be able to find some growing. It’s one of those plants that you see growing and you think ‘I wonder what that tastes like.’ It has a normal minty flavor, just way more intense and kind of bitter. With small bright spear shaped leaves and a spreading bush, it’s fairly easy to identify. Just so you don’t go eating random plants, I will include an image:

Another well know variety is Peppermint (Mentha x piperita), which is a hybrid. A hybrid is a cross between two genetically unlike individuals, in this case the result of breeding two different plants. In this case, the cross is between Spearmint and Watermint (another of the many kinds of mint). A cool fact: 92% of Peppermint is grown in Morocco. Lemme hit you with another: Peppermint is sterile, so it doesn’t produce seeds. That’s what being a hybrid does to it. It spreads by rhizomes instead, those root things that run along the surface of the ground. This means it is especially easy to grow from a cutting, and just like all mints, it grows best in moist places. It is used as the flavouring for almost every naturally mint-flavoured food, so you probably eat it all the time without realizing. So, don’t say you don’t like eating salads - your whole life is just a mint flavoured salad. If you like mint tea, just pick a few leaves, chuck them in a pot or teapot filled with boiling water. Saves you the expense of buying Peppermint tea and provides you with the FRESH stuff. Damn.

What?! You still want to hear more about mint? Knew it. Gotta pick a special mint for this one, so I’ll go with chocolate mint. It is probably no surprise to you at all that chocolate mint smells like chocolate, mint chocolate. It is a variety of Mentha x piperita (Peppermint), probably cultivated by some old weirdo who lived with a herd of goats on a mountain a long time ago. This person thought ‘I like mint chocolate, therefore I will create a mint that tastes like chocolate, and call it Chocolate Mint,’ and somehow this person created Chocolate Mint. Taste-wise there is a slight chocolatey flavor, most noticeable at the first bite, which is swiftly consumed by the potent menthol flavor. The hints of chocolate are subtle, almost indiscernible, but they are definitely there. Don’t feel let down when you can’t taste it, follow these wise words of advice: get better taste buds. Like many other varieties, chocolate mint is wonderful in a tea, especially iced tea. It is also delicious in chocolate, when you melt some in a pan on low heat (remember to stir so it doesn’t burn) and stir some chopped mint into the mixture. You can drink it hot like the French, or pop the chocolate sauce in some form of non-stick container and place in the fridge/freezer. Once cooled you have Chocolate Mint Chocolate. Cool. You can purchase this crazy plant off eBay, so no worries, just chill imagining that Chocolate Mint plant growing in a crappy light pink plastic pot on the corner of your windowsill.​

Lemon and mint, a combo made it heaven? You’d better believe it. Mint comes in various forms but Lemon Mint (or Lemon Balm, but you know it’s a mint, so we will call it such), probably smells the best. Sorry other mints, but the hint of citrus in the air can’t be beaten. It is reminiscent of a nice glass of ice cold water, beside a deckchair in the heat of summer. This plant is the material form of complete relaxation. Lemon Mint is versatile, it can do a lot of different things. These 'things' include being an attractive garden plant, an addition for a nice lemony taste in baking (can’t beat a lemony shortbread), or a tea (to be fair any mint makes a good tea). Lemon Mint after rain is one of the best smells around (is it me or does everything smell better after rain?), so if you live in a place where it rains, good idea to put some in your garden. Actually... it is a good idea to put it in even if you don’t live in a place where it rains, your watering can should be sufficient to keep it alive. Mints like mildly shady places, Lemon Mint included, so full sun is not the best for it, it can make it grow slower. But yeah, Lemon Mint is good, trust me.

I feel like I should put this one in because it is sometimes called a mint, even though it isn’t. So, I guess it’s a special guest. Vietnamese Mint or Hot Mint (or even Vietnamese Hot Mint); that’s what it’s called. It has pinkish stems and forest green spear-shaped leaves, which have dark arrow-like stripes across them. It tastes spicy, and after eating a lot of it, you will quickly realise that you now can no longer taste anything else. It’s the best thing to put in your Pho to get that authentic flavour. Bored with your chicken flavoured two minute noodles? Chuck some of this in, squeeze in some lemon, slide in some silky tofu, add a couple dashes of fish sauce and a few drops of Sriracha and voila! If you’re really cool, use beef flavour instead of chicken; it tastes better. You say you’re vegetarian, aye? Use soy sauce instead of fish sauce. And if you’re worried about the fact that the flavour on the front of the packet is a type of meat, fear not! This generally applies to the flavour alone, and so it is very unlikely that your Coles (or Woolworths...) noodles would have actual meat in them, and if you’re worried, you can always check the ingredient list. And there you have it! Cool kid noodles for a summer’s day, best served with a cold mint tea at your side. The plant itself grows in a similar way to mint; it likes to be damp and shaded, and it spreads easily, which makes it very easy to grow. It can even grow in a jar filled with water! So grow it and then you can have cool kid noodles every day of the week.​

Catnip, or Catmint, is not of the genus Mentha, but from the genus Nepeta of the same family Lamiaceae. In non-scientific terms it is like the sibling of common mints. As the name implies, cats like this plant quite a bit. When cats sniff it, the plant acts as a stimulant, and the effects can include rolling on the floor for around 15 minutes. However, when eaten, it acts as a sedative, so your sweet house cat’s wild reactions are because it sniffed the plant, not because it ate it. The effects are due to a chemical, called Nepetalactone, which is present in Catnip. Fact: around 1/3rd of cats aren’t effected by Catnip. Fact: around 2/3rds are. So, chances are that your extremely loving cat will like it. This is due to the reaction to Catnip being hereditary. If your cat likes Catnip, your cat's mum will also like Catnip. The effects of Catnip aren’t just limited to Cats, it also functions as a sedative for humans. Catnip also is good for attracting some pollinators, like butterflies, and repelling bloody mosquitoes. Seems likes Catnip is all benefits, so once again, grow it.​

I’ve talked a lot about mint. Not enough, but... you managed to read this far, so I bet you really want to try some. Don’t worry, nobody will judge you. So go out there, to the world, and taste what mint tastes like for yourself! Don’t just base your knowledge on mine. There's some Spearmint in a box out front of the cooking classrooms, go eat it. There’s also some hot mint there, eat it. There’s some random mint shaped plant growing behind the school, eat it. If my memory serves me correctly, there’s some Native River Mint growing in the wetlands behind the park, eat it. There are some Peppermint tea bags at the supermarket, just eat it. If there’s some mint, please eat it. It tastes nice.