This recipe has been provided by Veena Gokhale. To get Indian cooking lessons in Montreal in a fun & friendly setting at affordable price, you can visit Slurrrrp!
Time: 10 minutes ∙ Makes 1 large serving ∙ Difficulty Level: Easy
INGREDIENTS
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 heaped tsp black tea leaves
- 1-2 tsp sugar, or to taste
- 1-2 pods green cardamom slightly crushed
- 1-2 cloves slightly crushed
- 1 inch cinnamon stick
- 1/4 tsp ginger powder or a few slivers of fresh ginger (optional)
DIRECTIONS
Add the water, milk, sugar and spices in a cooking pot; stir. Bring slowly to a hard boil, uncovered. The slow boil allows the spices to infuse. Add the tea and continue boiling for 2 mins. (You may have to adjust heat so liquid does not run over.) Turn off the heat; take off the stove and let sit, covered, for 2 minutes. Strain and serve hot.
The longer you boil and steep the stronger the tea. It could also get bitter. So always strain all the tea you've made even if you are going to use some of it later.
NOTES
Indian Chai is traditionally sweet, but is sometimes served without sugar these days. You can use very basic tea leaves to make Masala Chai, Orange Pekoe, for example. If you don't have loose tea you can put tea bags in the water-milk mixture too. It's been done!
Other spices to use, experiment with: star anise, nutmeg powder, fennel seeds, a pinch of black pepper. You can also buy read-to-use Masala Chai or T-Masala spice at Singal's Indian Grocery. With this you can make faster masala tea by adding 1/4th tsp masala (or to taste) to milk-water-sugar mixture. I add Chai Masala directly to black, sugarless tea I make. Slurrrrp!
Also you can make vegan/dairy free version by substituting soya milk.
For a French video version, please see below:
This recipe has been provided by Veena Gokhale. To get Indian cooking lessons in Montreal in a fun & friendly setting at affordable price, you can visit Slurrrrp!