There are so many delicious combinations with spices! One combines turmeric, ginger and black pepper, all are warming in nature.
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Turmeric (Curcuma longa) 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. A tuber or rootlet, turmeric is bright orange inside its skin. When cut into, it stains easily! Its juice, like beets, is the same color as its flesh.
Recall Tanita de Ruijt’s tonic recipe? Actually, spiced milks and chais are considered tonics, too. It just depends on the emphasis you give a particular spice. And if it’s turmeric, you’re going to curate your recipe to emphasize the healing benefits of this spice. You can read more about turmeric’s properties here.
Rosalee de la Foret wrote The Alchemy of Herbs: Transform Everyday Ingredients into Foods and Remedies that Heal. (published by Hay House, Inc., 2017). Most of us are looking for a way to feel better with food, and don’t want complexity built in from the start. I think the magic of her recipes lies in simple instructions that promise results. See my review of this book, here.
Rosalee’s recipe for Warmed Golden Milk calls for ghee, turmeric powder, ginger powder, and a pinch of black pepper in milk only. There’s no water added and no black tea bags. Whew! There’ll be no worry about extra tannin ruining the taste, and no water to dilute the milk. She does say that you use non-dairy milk. But the trick in her recipe is the ghee and turmeric-ginger paste, cooked in milk, briefly. Of course, I did not use ghee, but a bit of olive oil, and the taste was fine since I used almond milk in place of dairy. After the mixture is “steaming hot”, i.e. not boiled, you’ll blenderize the hot liquid to get a foamy top. Be carefull of hot liquids in blenders! Warm Golden Milk is creamy and delicious.
Two authors make a raw golden milk. What do you think? I think raw or un-cooking is the best and fastest way to conjure up a healing tonic/golden milk.
Shiva Rose’s Whole Beauty (Artisan, a division of Workman Publishing, 2018) is a compendium of beauty formulas, exercises and lifestyle attitudes about the best ways to care for your own bounty. Shiva Rose is the owner and designer of Shiva Rose beauty products made of 100% purely natural ingredients. Her beliefs stem from actual experience with flowers, essences, oils and fats. She says our bodies need intimate contact with unadulterated plants to get healthy and maintain a beautiful presence, inside and out.
Shiva Rose’s Golden Milk is composed of equal parts turmeric, black pepper, and cardamom, with almond oil and milk. 
Spices and honey are blended with a little water and the milk. She advises sprinkling cardamom and black pepper over the blended liquids. I love the aspect of raw golden milk, and recognize black pepper and cardamom as complementing spices. A big plus is her addition of honey—because in a raw recipe, you have no fear of heating honey past a healthy-for-you temperature. Although her recipe calls for raw milk (dairy), I’ve tried it with almond milk, to good effect.
Nira Kehar’s Ojas, a cookbook… (Dovetail Press, 2018) has this recipe for Golden Milk, which is a cold-brew or raw drink. This is fantastic! It tastes so delicious, being reminiscent of raw desserts by Ani Phyo, drinks by Juliano Brotman, even raw bars and goodies by Stephanie Tourles. On my first try I’d mixed up enough to divide between two meals, keeping the remaining milk in the fridge overnight. The 2nd time, I managed to drink 2 portions in one morning! I loved this recipe, and you might, too.
Except for the turmeric/ginger paste, which should be mixed with ghee or oil and heated until incorporated and fragrant, the ingredients are cold or at room temperature.
First, you’ll make the turmeric/ginger paste; then grind clove buds and black peppercorns. Gather together two each of these dried fruits: dates, prunes and apricots. Place all of these ingredients in a blender, add non-dairy milk, and process until uniform-ish. Strain if desired (but it’s actually delicious to encounter a bit of dried fruit now and then) and pour into servings. Cinnamon powder can be sprinkled over this golden milk, if you’d like it.
Another favorite spice for chais is coriander seed, a very round-flavored seed which pairs well with cumin seed—they balance each other. Read more here…
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