TracyFood

Tea for Tuesday: homemade chai (in pictures!) 6 January 2009 9:40 am

Posted by Tracy in : cooking,pictures,recipes,tea , trackback

If you’ve only ever had chai in coffee shops or made it from a powder or “just add milk” mix (like most restaurants, I hasten to add), you’re in for a treat. I love chai, but it’s often excessively sweetened, and never more so than in ready-made form. The good news is that when you make your own with nothing fancier than tea and spices, you get to dial your own doses of sugar and caffeine, and it’s fun and easy, too!

So. Maybe you remember this picture from my post about cooking an Indian-style feast for Peter’s family at Xmas, or maybe you don’t.

It’s Peter putting the finishing touches on a pot of home-brewed chai, which along with several delicious beers rounded out the beverage offerings for our meal. (I’m not sure what I’m doing there over on the left, but I’m sure it’s very productive.) He’s adding milk but not sugar — again, one of the great things about homemade chai is being able to sweeten it to taste.

The chai was a hit at dinner: Mom Boothe even asked if we might have it again with breakfast the next morning, and I decided to make sure that could be arranged even if I wasn’t awake when everybody else was up and having tea. After everybody else had gone to bed, I instructed the house-elves to assemble the following chai-making kit, and wrote a little note for the early risers:

The note, pictured here, reads:

In case I’m not up in time to make breakfast chai for everyone… boil the contents of this bowl* in 1-2 quarts water until the whole kitchen smells awesome,** then strain the spice water + use it to brew the tea of your choice, or no tea at all, for total caffeine freedom. Add milk and sweeteners to your own taste, and don’t feel obliged to save any for me.

Love,

-Tracy

*plus the ginger in the fridge, cut into slices
**at least 10 minutes, but longer the more H20 you use

The ginger in the fridge, by the way, was a piece maybe 1 1/2 inches long, about as thick as my thumb. There’s no need to peel it, just cut it into slices. Here’s a closer look at the spice mix in the glass bowl:

It’s a piece of cinnamon stick about 2 inches long, some black peppercorns, whole cloves, fennel seeds, and ground cardamom (I prefer whole cardamom pods, since they’re easier to strain out, but use whatever you’ve got — and if there’s an ingredient in that list you don’t like, by all means leave it out). The instructions really are as simple as I made them on that note: boil your choice of spices till the water’s infused with their deliciousness, then use that water to brew tea (or not, if you want to keep caffeine out of it). At some point, strain out the spices. You can even boil the tea in with the spices, but you’ll definitely need a sweetener at that point. I like honey, but sugar is fine, too. I’ll leave the choice of milk up to you as well.

And that’s homemade chai. I can drink a whole pot all by myself, but it’s nice to share.

http://leenaeats.com/blog leena!

This is a post after my own heart! I grew up drinking homemade chai (my father is from India) and it is always interesting to hear how different people make theirs. For our family chai masala, we use ground ginger, black and green cardamom, which we simmer along with some black indian tea (you can find it at indian grocery stores, I buy Red Label). We also simmer the tea, the spices, and water and milk together (we do 1/2 a cup of each for one person) on really low heat until it turns a deep caramel color. The darker, the more flavor! I have a cup at least once a day, and it is pure comfort to me. Thanks for sharing your method!
cj

Where are the pancakes! (I suppose this counts as tea : ). I’ll give this a try at some point since I do like chai, but, and I repeat!, where are the pancakes!