Cardamom Ginger Tea

Bachelor Cooking, Beverages, Cooking Basics, Food, culture & lifestyle, Winter recipes

Before the colonial rule our ancestors used to serve classic refreshments like Ayurvedic lemonade (panakam), buttermilk, spiced-milk, elixir, etc. to their guests. Later it became a tradition to serve beverages like tea or coffee to our guests. Nowadays tea breaks have become the order of a day in every institution across India. Every conversation, whether an important official discussion or a trivial gossip, begins with a sip of refreshing cardamom ginger tea or masala chai. Apparently tea shops turn out to be a place for making friends, discussing international, national and local news and also a place for finding solutions for social issues.

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Our Prime Minister served tea to his guest

During heavy downpour people used to take shelter in a nearby tea shop as they all like to relish hot ginger tea to keep them warm. So every tea shop tries to woo the customers by serving a cup of hot flavorful spiced tea along with delightful accompaniments like samosa, masal vadai, bajji, etc. during monsoon.

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Ginger Tea with Punjabi Samosa & Dates-tamarind Sauce

It has been raining here almost every evening, and I also like to serve my family a glass of classic ginger tea along with plantain fritters (vazhakkai bajji) to enjoy the cool breezy weather that happens to last only for few days in a year.

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Ginger tea with South Indian Bajji & Chutney

Cardamom Ginger Tea Recipe

We, Indians, generally use leaf tea or dust tea to prepare black tea as well as white tea (tea with milk). I prefer to use leaf tea which is more aromatic than dust tea, but dust tea is stronger than leaf tea. Hence it is required to double the quantity of leaf tea while making tea.

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Leaf tea

Lately we have been cutting down the intake white sugar to a large extent, and I have started using other alternates like cane jaggery, palm jaggery, coconut sugar, etc. Here I have used palm sugar crystals (panangarkandu) and I find palm sugar as the best sweetener for tea and palm jaggery (karuppatti) for coffee. Now the recipe for cardamom ginger tea using palm sugar is as below:

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Hot Ginger Caradamom Tea served in South Indian Dabara

Yields: 500 ml

Ingredients:

Hot milk*300 ml
Water250 ml
Leaf tea**2 tbsp
Palm sugar crystals2 tbsp
Ginger2″
Cardamom2

**Instead you can add a tablespoon of dust tea

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Tea with milk & palm sugar

How to make spiced tea:

  • Mince ginger using fine-toothed grater, crush the seeds of cardamom using mortar & pestle and keep them aside.
  • Heat a sauce pan with water in high flame.
  • Add leaf tea, minced ginger and palm sugar into the sauce pan and bring it to boil.
  • Now reduce the flame to low and pour hot milk into the pan.
  • Finally stir in cardamom powder just before removing the pan from heat.
  • Immediately strain the tea through a tea-strainer.
  • Serve hot cardamom ginger tea with crunchy savory snacks.
tea-making Cardamom Ginger Tea
How to make cardamom ginger tea

*Since adding cold milk into hot decoction of tea & ginger would lead to curdling of milk, it is required to add hot milk while preparing spiced tea.

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  2. Happy New Year, dear Megala!
    Ginger Caradamom Tea is the best for the cold new year day! Thank you for sharing.
    Best wishes to you and family!

  10. So much can happen with with this one cup of wonderful ginger – cardamom tea! Lots of gossip with friends, late night exams preparations, a lot helpful during work from home and having sips while posting the blog😊

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