November 13, 2008

How to Make Indian Chai Tea

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 1
Get help from a neighbor for this. Bonus points if your neighbor is Indian.




Step 2
Boil 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 3
Add 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 4
Pour in a generous amount of milk so that the tea's color is light chocolate brown.



Step 5
Boil the tea longer enough so that the milk boils and rises up three times.



Step 6
Pour tea through a strainer into glass cups.




Step 7
Enjoy!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

No chocolate???
Ammo

SandraK said...

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.

007 in Africa said...

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!

Victoria said...

Nice! We make this in Sydney too. Big tea drinkers, in this house.