making chai without milk

[lastmika]

I am a Chai nut, but I've recently been told to keep away from milk for certain health reasons. Does anyone have good advice on a solid Chai recipe that can be either made with a milk substitute or just water?? Thanks!!

[Milagai]

The word "chai" simply means "tea", so go ahead

and make tea any way you like without milk....

If you want to replicate "masala chai" i.e.

tea with spices, try soy milk instead of dairy milk.

Whether making plain chai or masala chai,

you use about 80 to 90% water anyway

(boil water with spices if using, add a splash

or soy or dairy milk, when boiling add tea

and let steep, add sugar / honey to taste, and

you're done).

There's a lot of variety in the spice combinations you can use,

the most common is:

2-3 slices of ginger + 1-2 bruised cardamom pods + 1-2 cracked black peppercorns

Milagai

[lastmika]

hmm I will try that out. Yes I meant masala chai and not simply black tea. Has anyone put other things inside theirs? like cloves or cinnamon? I always get a sense that some of them have a cinnamon/nutmeg and clove aroma.Thanks again!

[Milagai]

If you like cinnamon/cloves/etc in yr masala chai, then

go ahead and put some in.

There's no single "correct" recipe.

It's whatever people prefer....

For some reason the western chains seem

to dump cinnamon into any dish that's vaguely

sweet, so I guess the Starbucks type recipes

really have cinnamon notes in their masala chai recipes.

I think that in South Asia however cinnamon is

considered a savory spice not a sweet one.

Cardamom is the spice for sweets....

Milagai

[andiesenji]

Here is an extensive list of chai tea or spiced chai recipes, massala chai. etc.

Note the "Laung chai" is made with cloves.

I have several other "recipes" as they vary by amount and type of spices/herbs added to the mixture.

There are as many recipes as there are cooks...... The number is virtually infinite.

I started out many years ago with Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for massala chai.

This one.

I have another favorite that I think I got from Monisha Bharadwaj's The Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and over 200 Authentic Recipes.

That being said, there are a few, excellent mixtures that you can use as a base and add to or alter to your own taste.

One of my favorites is Republic of Tea's Cardamom Cinnamon A blend of cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pink peppercorns, and star anise This does not contain any tea!

RoT Cardamom Cinnamon

I buy it by the pound because I use it for a lot of other things.

You can add it to loose black, oolong or green tea or to herbal teas, a little goes a long way.

I simmer 2 ounces of the mixture in 12 oz of water for 10 minutes, strain, then add sugar to make a spiced syrup which I can add to foods, such as applesauce, egg custard, rice, etc. You may find many more uses for it.

You can find it in the tins, loose, in a few stores but usually it is only in teabags. If you have a Cost Plus World Market nearby, check with them, they carry most of the RoT products both loose and bagged.

For a spice blend with tea, RoT also has the seasonal Tea of Good Tidings

They also package specialty holiday teas for some stores under a proprietary name but do not sell them through the web site.

I forgot to add that if you problem is lactose intolerance, you can use the lactose-free dairy products, they do not cause the gastric problems associated with this problem.

However you can also use one of the nut milks, or soy (I don't care for soy myself) there are several new products including an excellent almond milk that combines beautifully with tea. The rice milk is not as satisfactory, in my opinion.

My local health food store carries an Oat milk (Pacific Foods brand) that is very, very good. It doesn't have the flavor of soy milk and is heat stable so it can be used in cooked pudding, gravy, etc.

Edited October 15, 2006 by andiesenji (log)

[dimi]

In my opinion I would prefer to stay away from the milk substitutes. Maybe its the thought of the 'substitute' adding its own origin's flavor to the chai. I occasionally make masala chai with water - no milk nor substitutes. Its maybe not as smooth a drink, but it calms me just the same.

[andiesenji]

That is why I suggested the oat milk. It has very little flavor on its own and is heat stable, so it can be simmered with the spices and the tea. I have used it several times as I have some vegan friends who love chai but use no dairy. I have also used it in cooked vanilla pudding, rice pudding and banana pudding using kudzu root as a thickener.

This Vegan Chef article

mentions that oat milk is thicker and sweeter than rice or soy milk, which is one of the reasons I prefer it.

Edited October 19, 2006 by andiesenji (log)

[AmyDaniel]

I'm interested in learning about regional differences in South Asian chai masalas and proportions. My mother (Punjabi) has always mixed fennel seeds with cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves, the latter three spices cut (by us daughters ) into tiny bits before mixing with the fennel. As explained above, we'll let the spices boil in water before steeping tea leaves or bags on the stove; then we'll add milk and let that just come to a boil.

Off the top of my head, I'd say, proportion-wise, that we mix about 1/3 part of each of the latter three spices with 1/2 to 1 part fennel seed (I'll ask my mom about it).