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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Recipe for Chai Concentrate



Yesterday I promised you another Indian ingredient recipe.  The surprise is that it isn’t for a meal.  It's for chai (Indian tea) concentrate.  I saw the original recipe from thecatnipcat and thought it would be great to have this in the fridge for iced chai lattes or, on that rare cool evening here, a hot latte.


I halved the original recipe and tweaked the ingredients to my preferences.  I think this is a versatile enough recipe to increase or decrease ingredients depending on what you like (I like cinnamon, so I used more; not that crazy about cloves so used less).


Ingredients :
2 ¼ cups water
5 tea bags, black tea
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp orange zest
4 whole cloves
1 whole star anise
1/3 cup light brown sugar
½ TBSP honey
½ TBSP vanilla extract
4 cardamom pods, smashed so seeds can infuse in the chai
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
1 thin coin of fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
¼ tsp freshly ground nutmeg

Method:
Boil water and remove from heat.  Add all ingredients.  Steep for 15 minutes or longer depending on how strong you like your Chai; strain through a coffee filter, and then refrigerate liquid.


To serve, mix 1 part chai concentrate to 1 part soy milk (or regular milk; or 2:1 depending on how strong you like it) and heat or serve over ice.  I used my immersion blender to froth up the milk.


Wow this was good.  And, bonus…the house smelled great!



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