So I didn’t care much for darjeeling on its own, but it sure makes some good chai! Here’s my basic recipe for chai:
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups milk
1-2 T sugar (to taste)
2 tsp or so tea of your choice (black or green; i like it with green tea too)
2-3 cardamom pods (i imagine you could use ground cardamom if that’s what you can find)
10 cloves
10 black peppercorns (i never taste pepper in my chai, but it gives it a tad more spice)
1/2 star anise pod (or a whole one if it’s pretty small)
1/4 cinnamon stick (i’m not too picky with this cuz it’s hard to get exactly how much of one you want broken off)
dash of ground nutmeg
dash of ground ginger
Bring water to boil in a small saucepan. Dissolve sugar. Add tea. Drop heat and simmer for 5 min. Turn heat back up. Add milk. Bring to boil. And be careful when boiling anything with milk or it’ll boil over. Not that i would ever do such a thing. ahem Once it’s boiling, drop down to a simmer again and simmer for 5 more minutes. Strain and serve. I like to strain it twice because that seems to get more of the little grainy stuff from the bottom. I usually just strain the whole thing back into the measuring cup i used to measure the milk and water, rinse the strainer, then strain from there into whatever cup i’m using. Also, the amounts of liquid i use ends up filling my really big mug just right. So you may want to cut down on both.
