Being inventive and creative, India’s early tea baristas and Ayurvedic cooks turned to spices they had on hand. These herbalists and cooks manifested the possibilities of combining tea with milk and spices to make healing and warming chais and spiced milks.
I wanted to research chai recipes and become more familiar with their spices. With Tanita de Ruijt’s Tonics I got inspiration. And honestly, I wanted to find a chai and spiced milk recipe that I really loved the taste of. And to make in my home kitchen and be proud to share it. These spices that seemed so mysterious at first—ginger, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, turmeric, nutmeg, star anise, cumin, saffron, and coriander—became less daunting to use. And I knew there’d be some fun in preparing healthful and flavorful drinks with these spices!
Just to demonstrate the variation on a few select spices, I tried out the recipes from nine cookbooks, finding that all but one of them uses ginger and black peppercorns. Only one recipe did not use ginger and two of them did not use black pepper. Why was this the case?
Bearing in mind that ginger and black pepper are hot spices, it’s easy to see why a recipe chooses other spices. Even though these drinks are very health-promoting, some cooks prefer less heat in their bodies. Are you like this? Does eating hot and spicy food result in skin break-outs, indigestion, and heat that causes night-sweats or daytime sweating, even if it’s not hot weather-wise? If so, you might want to consider using less hot spice in your food. Author Divya Alter gives alternative spice suggestions for Pitta type constitutions which could be helpful for your condition.
Chais made in home kitchens may feature the combination of cinnamon, cardamom, and black pepper, and a warming, spicy drink is the result! Comparing the taste of chais from these authors, Divya Alter, Tanita de Ruijt, and Ana Sortun, I found 2 absolute favorites.
A variation on chai mixes fennel or star anise into the masala without black pepper. Comparing the taste of these chais I tried from Nira Kehar and Kate O’Donnell and found a very classic recipe.
Yet there are many delicious combinations with spices. One is turmeric and black pepper, both warming in nature. Turmeric is one of the three gingers. When added to a liquid, or pounded into a paste with ginger and added to milk, the resulting drink can be called golden milk. The signature “golden” refers to a color the spice is famous for creating. Its juice, like beets, is the same color as its flesh. Comparing the taste of spiced milks from these authors, Rosalee de la Foret, Shiva Rose and Nira Kehar, I found a fantastic recipe!
Another favorite spice is coriander seed, a very round-flavored seed which pairs well with cumin seed—they balance each other. Coriander levels the sharpness of hotter spices like ginger and chile. Altogether in a different league from the other cookbooks is one by Gabreilla Mlynarczyk, who engages spices as a flavor enhancement to drinks, be they cold or hot. Her recipe for a spiced syrup is truly unique.
A third interesting spice is saffron—its bright red strands give unique flavor to main dishes, desserts and drinks. But you only add the tiniest pinch to liquids, even if concentrated as in syrup, a tiny bit goes the distance for you. Comparing recipes from Ana Sortun and Ananta Ripa Ajmera that added this spice, I found one with a robust, melded taste, an unusual synergy of all its ingredients.
I found that you could grind or crush, mix and store your spices as blends, but for best results, the entire recipe is made fresh. We are talking about miniscule amounts of some spices—like 3 black peppercorns for one cup of liquid. Which is why a favorite recipe—that could be memorized and combined from scratch in a trice—is a good way to go! See the first in a series of posts on chais and spiced milks, here.
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