Chai / Spiced Tea - The recipe

Thanks to old friends for the recipe, and more recently the HappyBellyFish guy for fine tuning. 

I get all this on Amazon, but check local stores, too. 

Ceylon cinnamon is critical... it is the softer type of cinnamon, and it is better for making chai masala, aka spiced tea. It can be pulverized easily, tastes differently than the usual USA cinnamon we are accustomed to. This has an extra mint flavor and less of the sharp super duper spicy cinnamon bite. One of the reasons I started using this b/c it supposed to be better for your liver (I know right?) if you eat a lot of cinnamon. Look it up, you'll see what I mean. But also, some Chai experts from the India sub continent I looked up use this type of cinnamon for their tea so... yeah. Ceylon cinnamon (half a stick or more, crushed), green cardamom (half tablespoon, crushed), cloves (half tablespoon, lightly crushed), a couple of turns of cracked black pepper (not too much, it'll take over), 3 to 6 teaspoons of the granulated tea (India Tea is the brand I get I think), 2 cups of water, 2 teaspoons of sugar (or lately coconut sugar), 1 cup of whole milk... bring to boil, let sit 6+ more minutes (notice, some people say boil till mega bubbles, cool a moment, do it again, over and over to make it thicker and quicker... I'd rather just do it my way). Strain. Best dang tea you can find... and you just adjust amounts to your liking of course. If it comes out too strong, add more milk later. 

Sidenotes: 

From Nepal, a version of a tea bag with black tea and we think black cardamom (definitely not the green kind). It's pretty good, simple but good with milk just like that. 

Some people put ginger in Chai. While I love ginger, I keep it far away from my spiced milk tea... FAR away. 

It's all good, adjust amounts to your liking. More green cardamom for a sweeter flavor, for instance. 

Some people like Star Anise mixed in... I stopped using it after HappyBellyFish said he never uses it either. And b/c of the scare/paranoia of the poisonous kind of anise getting mixed in. Funny thing is I bought some real anise seeds and used them for a while... it works if you want to add that flavor, though I've never seen or heard of anybody else doing that. 

HappyBellyFish uses some other version of sweet stuff... what's he call it, Jaggery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaggery apparently it's just way less refined cane sugar. More flavors. So closer to the dark brown stuff. 

If you use honey, add it after the whole thing is complete, not during cooking. 

Regular cinnamon, don't over do it, small small amounts are OK:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29501463/

https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/is-cinnamon-toxic-to-the-liver

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ceylon-vs-cassia-cinnamon#TOC_TITLE_HDR_3

History of Chai / Spiced Tea in India (they say a spiced medicinal drink existed in India ages ago, but the Brits introduced the tea leaves to India in the 1800s): https://tastylicious.com/what-is-chai-tea/

Below is the thin, golden (not orange) easily crushed Ceylon style cinnamon and other ingredients:

A lot of the Ceylon cinnamon is fine, it's mild in flavor, but I use about half a stick so I don't run out too quickly... one whole stick is probably more to my liking. It is soft, so when you crush it up, it almost powders, so you get more flavor during cooking. (If you are stuck with regular cinnamon, the sticks are too hard to crush with my tools, so I have to use 1.5 to two sticks... and then if you put pure regular cinnamon powder, it will gum up the tea during cooking. Moral of the story, stick to Ceylon Cinnamon.)

I like more green cardamom and less cloves than HappyBellyFish, but do it how you like it.

For me, just a little black pepper is plenty.