So apparently, those Chai tea sacks I buy at Giant, are not the "authentic" way to make Indian tea. Or so my neighbor says. I don't know what makes her such her expert (other than being Gujarati) but I'm a good sport, so I let her show me how to make Chai
Step 1Get help from a neighbor for this. Bonus points if your neighbor is Indian.
Step 2Boil water with coarse tea grains (made from dried tea leaves), a couple of cardamom pods, and masala. Masal is Hindi for "spice". You can make chicken masala of course, but I suspect the combination of spices is completely different. I think that this chai masala is a mix of ginger, anise, orange peel, cloves and peppercorn.
Step 3Add sugar. I think that the myth is that Chai is incredibly sweet, but it doesn't have to be. I like it on the less-sweet side.
Step 4Pour in a generous amount of milk so that the tea's color is light chocolate brown.
Step 5Boil the tea longer enough so that the milk boils and rises up three times.
Step 6Pour tea through a strainer into glass cups.
Step 7Enjoy!
4 comments:
No chocolate???
Ammo
Thanks for the instructions and pictures. Do you have any specific measurements of spices and tea and water to go with the recipe? The pictures are a great help. I blogged about your post as well here, http://tea-sippers.info/teas/93/tea-notes-today.html if you want to include that.
Thanks Sandrak for your comment - unfortunately I don't have measurements - it's really done ad hoc. I think it probably takes 3 or 4 times of making it to find the proportion that works for you. Thanks for the link!
Nice! We make this in Sydney too. Big tea drinkers, in this house.
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