If I were to gloss over today's topic, I would not be a
true student of Argentina. If there’s anything you need to know about this
enormous, majestic country, it is this:
MATE
Contrary to its English connotation, "mate" has little to do
with significant others (if only) and more to do with staying up until 3 am
against your will.
Mate (pronounced “mah-tay”) is a traditional Argentine drink
that is similar to, if not composed of, loose-leaf tea. I’m not really sure. It
might just be leaves. (Obviously I didn’t do any extra research about this
topic)
It is drunk by much of the population, both with and without
sugar added. Sometimes you’ll get made fun of if you drink it sweet (they’d
probably let me fly under the radar since I’m a foreigner). Its flavor is—distinct.
We’ll call it an acquired taste. As in, “I think I acquired something dead in
my mouth when I drank that.” It is very, very bitter and high in caffeine (hence the trouble sleeping).
But a lot of people seem to really like it, so I’ve been
trying to drink mate every couple days to Argentinize myself.
There is a science to preparing a mate. There IS a wrong way
to do it, and my mission is to experientially find out every wrong way over the
course of my stay. Not really. But that’s how it’s turning out.
Mate—the container (often a hollowed-out gourd) the mate is
drunk from
Mate—the name of the drink itself
Yerba Mate—the leaves that mate is made from.
DO YOU SEE WHY THIS IS CONFUSING
THE GRINGA’S GUIDE TO MATE MAKING
1. See that everyone else drinking mate, and think
that maybe it’s a thing you should do.
Here are some sneaky pictures I took of other people’s mate
cups to prove that it’s real
2. Locate a mate. Available in supermarkets.
5. Try to bleach the mold out of your mate
Oh em gee, so cute
3. Find that there is almost an entire aisle
dedicated to yerba mate in the local grocery store, and have multiple heart
attacks because your math skills have degraded to the point where you can’t do
basic division and think you’re going to pay eight dollars for a bag of leaves.
4. Rectify your mathematical inaccuracies and buy
the yerba mate (it was like $2.50.)
6. Whoops, I’m skipping ahead of myself. DON’T
FORGET THE BOMBILLA!
The bombilla (pronounced
“bomb-bee-zhahhhhhhhhhhh” if you hold it out dramatically) is a metal
straw-like apparatus that filters the yerba mate so that you get mostly liquid
when you sip and not mostly planty bits. Make sure to put the bombilla in
first.
I kind of apologize for being too
lazy to wash off the bombilla first
7. Fill your mate with the yerba. Not ALL the way,
but put a good amount in. For a smaller mate cup, you might want to use two
medium-sized hamsters worth of yerba. If you don’t have a hamster to compare
against, a small bird will also work. Try to get one that looks kind of
healthy.
8. Insert an unnecessary step.
9. Boil some water.
10. WAIT! Were you going to USE the water you just
boiled??? Because THAT, my friend, is where you are going wrong. No wonder your
mate always tastes so bad. Nope, add cool water to the boiling water until it
lowers to about 80 degrees celsius. In Farenheit, for you Americans, that’s
“pretty hot.”
11. If you chose the red door, go to page 53. If you
chose the green door, continue on to the next page.
12. If you decide to go the wussy route and take
your mate sweet(ish), dump a bunch of sugar in on top of the yerba.
13. Pour the
water over the yerba mate. The yerba is very dense, so you might have to
agitate the bombilla a little bit to help it settle (“Hey bombilla, the
professor moved up the due date for our term papers to today!!! ...JUST
KIDDINGGGGG!!!”) (“Hey bombilla, we’re totally gonna give you a SWIRLY after
class! Look forward to it!”)
14. Enjoy your first mate!
Other informational thingzzz about mate
You may notice that in some pictures I am holding
a bright green lump of something. That is my new mate. My first one got moldy
through, uh, no fault of my own, and bleach couldn’t save it. So I bought one
made of silicone. PLASTIC FTW
Mate is so popular that some people carry around a thermos
containing hot water so they can refill their mate cup on the go. At the zoo
there was a machine which, for two pesos, would refill your thermos.
Mate is traditionally a communal drink. My dad and my brother
would hate this, because they are weird about food and don’t like their mashed
potatoes to touch their dessert. By “communal” I mean that the owner of the
mate cup will have brought a thermos of water and will offer a drink to each
friend. It is traditional to drink the entire cup of mate, NOT JUST A SIP, before
handing it back to the owner to be refilled. Sometimes the cup will have gone
through five or six people before it reaches you, in which case you literally
have to suck it up.
Mate, unlike your average tea leaves, does not lose its potency
after one or two uses. The same batch of yerba can be used multiple times
before being discarded. It is common knowledge that the first mate will taste
the most sour, as the yerba has had less chance to settle. Later mates are
described as “lavado” (washed) because most of the smaller yerba particles have
sifted down to the bottom of the cup, where they resign themselves to a life of
hopelessness and denigration by the rest of the yerba.
Now that you know the basic science and some of the most
common pitfalls of the mate-making process, feel free to go out and apply these
principles to the real world, where you will most likely be unable to find any
of the supplies I mentioned above (except maybe sugar and a small bird) and
have to resign yourself to a life of hopelessness and denigration by the rest
of the yerba. I mean your peers.
YAAAAAAAAAY
