Masala Chai

Ingredients

• 3 tsp strong loose black tea, or 3 tea bags
• 500 ml whole milk
• 300 ml water
• 6 green cardamom pods, crushed
• 25 g ginger, sliced and bruised
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 4 cloves
• 4 black peppercorns
• 40 g sugar, or to taste

Method

1. Crush the spices

   Bash the cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns in a mortar. Whole spices dropped in intact barely give anything up in the ten minutes this takes — they have to be broken open.

2. Boil the spices in water first

   Bring the water and crushed spices to a boil and simmer for five minutes. Water extracts the spices far better than milk does, which is why chai starts with water and not with milk.

   5 min

3. Add the tea

   Add the tea and boil for two minutes. It wants to be genuinely strong — a delicate brew disappears entirely once the milk goes in.

   2 min

4. Milk and sugar

   Pour in the milk and sugar and bring back to a boil. As it rises up the pan, pull it off the heat, let it settle, and repeat two or three times. That repeated rising is what gives chai its particular cooked-milk body.

   5 min

5. Strain from a height

   Strain into cups, pouring from a height to aerate it. Taste for sugar — it should be sweet enough to carry the spice, but you can always add more at the table.