Sometimes all it takes is a little scratching beneath the surface to discover that politics, power relations, and privilege are hiding everywhere. And the story of this popular drink has fascinating Polish connections that go much further back than most of us would expect.
The same is true of Ilex paraguariensis, the Paraguayan holly used to make yerba mate. Today, Poland is among Europe’s leading consumers of yerba, and the Polish history of this herb stretches back… 160 years!
And that’s a good thing, because yerba is packed with nutrients and gives you a better boost than coffee. It can be a perfect drink for a party—not just on New Year’s Eve—but also for… dealing with the hardships of the following day.
Basic Version
INGREDIENTS:
- 50 g of yerba mate (2–3 handfuls)
- 5 g of dried lemongrass or two fresh stalks
- 300 ml of orange juice
- 2–3 tablespoons of sugar
PREPARATION:
Pour 750 ml of hot water (not boiling!) over the yerba mate. The ideal temperature is between 70–80°C (158–176°F). Leave it to cool slowly.
Once it has cooled, add the orange juice and two or three tablespoons of sugar and stir.
Strain through a sieve and top up with cold water to make 1.5 litres in total.
VARIATIONS:
Instead of pure orange juice, you can use a mixture of two parts orange juice and one part lime juice.
NOTES:
The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of the juice. The sweeter the juice, the less sugar you’ll need. Personally, I don’t sweeten drinks like this, but considering the trials of the following day, some quick energy from simple carbohydrates is definitely welcome.
You can brew the leaves two or three more times.
Yerbanada—not just for a hangover.
Yerbanada Tereré
INGREDIENTS:
- 50 g of yerba mate
- 10 ice cubes
- Cold water
- 250 ml of orange juice
- 2–3 tablespoons of sugar
PREPARATION:
Boil the water beforehand and chill it in the fridge until it reaches just a few degrees above freezing.
Add the ice cubes to the yerba mate and pour over one litre of cold water.
Leave it in the refrigerator for one or two hours.
Add the orange juice and sweeten to taste.
VARIATIONS:
As above.
NOTES:
As above.
Tereré has a milder flavour than hot-brewed yerba.
Almond Yerbanada
INGREDIENTS:
- 50 g of yerba mate
- A batch of orgeat prepared according to this recipe
- 2–3 tablespoons of sugar
PREPARATION:
Prepare it in much the same way as the tereré version. Pour the cold orgeat over the yerba mate and ice cubes. Leave it in the refrigerator for an hour, strain, and sweeten if necessary.
This version is the mildest and the most nutritious.
A Little Moment at Momencik Backstage
I invented my first yerbanada during one rather eventful Sunday at Momencik (a vegan taco and burrito place—highly recommended).
The Saturday before, to quote an obscure youth band, “nothing ever went the way it should.”
The owner and I had been preparing food production from six or seven in the morning. Shortly before opening time, the girl who was supposed to work the bar called to say she was sick, had a fever, diarrhoea, every ailment imaginable, and was basically dying.
Shit happens, as philosophers say.
Not long afterwards, Feli—the owner—managed to slice his hand with a knife so badly that he nearly cut off a finger. Luckily, there was an emergency station nearby.
Unfortunately, bilocation remains the privilege of only a few saints and yogis, so running both the kitchen and the bar at once was rather difficult.
Thankfully, we managed to call Sasha in. Sasha had arrived from Moscow just a few days earlier, and his Polish wasn’t exactly great. So I took over the bar while he ran the kitchen.
And that’s how we kept going until 10 p.m.
After sorting out the cash register—and without even cleaning the dining room—I got home sometime after eleven.
At six in the morning, I was back in the kitchen.
My main thought was:
“FOR F*’S SAKE! How am I going to survive this day?”**
Necessity being the mother of invention, I bought some bagged yerba mate with lime from the shop next door, brewed it, added orange juice and sugar, and served it to the customers.
And most importantly—to myself.
All the Goodness Inside Yerbanada
Whether prepared hot or cold, yerba provides a wealth of nutrients and xanthines.
Xanthines are mild alkaloids with stimulating and relaxing properties. The best-known xanthine is caffeine, found in coffee, but yerba also contains theobromine (which is also present in cocoa and guarana) and theophylline.
It is rich in vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, C, and E, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulphur, and zinc.
All of this works wonders for what we politely call the morning-after syndrome.
The nutritional benefits of orange juice further enhance this therapeutic effect, while sugar provides an extra energy boost.
The Tsar, the Great Emigration, and “Herwa Mate”
So what about that political and Polish history of yerba mate?
No, this isn’t about a certain barefoot “cowboy,” but about Polish emigrants in nineteenth-century Brazil.
In the mid-1800s, the Brazilian authorities began recruiting European settlers. Emigration intensified after 1888, when slavery was abolished and workers were needed on rubber plantations.
It is estimated that around 150,000 Poles emigrated to Brazil during that period.
Today, the Brazilian Polish community numbers somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million people, depending on the source.
One of those emigrants was Teofil Rudzki. He inspired Edmund Woś-Saporski, a prominent activist within the Polish diaspora in Brazil, to export yerba mate to the Russian Empire under the name “herwa mate.”
Rudzki arrived in Warsaw with a small quantity of herwa in 1882.
His efforts were so successful that by early 1883 he had imported fifty barrels of mate from Brazil.
I couldn’t find any information on how many kilograms or litres that represented, but assuming each barrel held between 30 and 50 litres doesn’t seem unreasonable.
That was an impressive amount.
Ironically, this great success marked the beginning of the end.
The sudden popularity of mate caused an equally dramatic decline in tea consumption. The main importer of Chinese tea was Count Orlov, a man closely connected to the Tsarist court.
By 1884, the Count had successfully lobbied for high tariffs on Paraguayan holly, making the entire enterprise economically unviable.
And so yerba mate had to wait more than a hundred years before finally finding its permanent home in Poland.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.