Chai—One Pot Method (makes two cups)
My favorite one-pot method recipe:
- Ingredients
- 1 cup of cow milk
- 1 cup of water
- ½ inch fresh ginger root
- More or less to taste
- More concerned with juice then mass, that is where the flavor is)
- 1 pinch powdered saffron
- More or less to taste
- 6 whole pods of cardamom
- Green
- More or less to taste
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- More or less to taste
- 1 tablespoon black tea
- Black tea as the benefit of caffeine to which you don’t develop a tolerance. It works the same every time.
- I like Wagh Bakri
- 3 grinder turns of black pepper
- Usually only during winter
- More or less to taste
- Tools
- Pot big enough to hold the ingredients
- Vessel big enough to hold the the number of cups of water and milk that you are using
- Ginger Grater: extracts the ginger juice quickly and extracts every drop of juice
- Mortar & Pestle: for the cardamom
- only hold the cup over the pot instead of the grinder when you dump in the seeds otherwise the steam will get inside the grinder and make it unhappy
- Tea Spoon: to peel the ginger
- Or paring knife if you are a ninja
- Steps
- Place pot on counter-top. Add pepper, black tea, saffron, and cardamom.
- Add water to vessel. Peel and grate ginger. Grab ginger fiber and place in pot. Use water to rinse grater into pot. Add all of remaining water to pot.
- Bring pot to a boil. Fill vessel with milk.
- When water reaches a boil, pour in milk.
- Allow chai to come to a boil, then quickly remove from the heat. Stare at pot the entire time otherwise it will boil over. Maitain focus without distraction here. Do this two more times.
- Strain through a fine strainer so as to filter out tea and herbs.
- Either add sugar to individual servings so everyone can sweeten to their taste or add it to pot.
- Serve. The chai party begins.