The Recipe Box: Not Really Thai Iced Tea

Not Really Thai Iced Tea

From the recipe box of KimB

I love exotic food ... well mostly sort of ... as long as it isn't too exotic, just bordering on being minorly exotic, then I'll go for it.

One of the greatest changes in our society is the availability of food that goes beyond the Mid-West Blue Plate Special: Meat and Potatoes. One of the items that qualifies on my list is Thai Iced Tea¹.

I am not sure when I first enjoyed Thai Iced Tea. It might have been when some Thai friends at work took a pool of us non-Thais to a first class Thai restaurant in Berkeley California. They did the ordering. We were repeatedly told DO NOT ASK FOR CHOP STICKS!
To avoid

A) embarrassing our hosts and
B) getting tossed out of the restaurant by the Thai Chef.

The food was fabulous and there were many oohs and ahhs around the table. My Thai friends ordered carefully and had many instructions for the staff (in Thai of course) about the amount of heat in each dish. It was so artfully done that none of us non-Thais realized we breathing dragon fire by the end of the meal. ²



Thai Iced Tea

 So, somewhere I learned about Thai Iced Tea and ordered it whenever I saw it on the menu. It has a wonderful taste. It is super sweet and topped with cream or sweetened condense milk. It has this wonderful orangey color to it. It is also the non-Thai's fire extinguisher extraordinaire.

So I have tried to learn how to make it. I confess to being super obtuse and totally missing the recipes as told to me by various sources because I just could not believe the ingredients list.

Until recently I'd given up on actually accomplishing the feat of replicating this wonderful drink. That is, until the weather and the fires in California have turned the California Central Valley into an enormous furnace. Central California is known for hot weather - we make raisins here: those shriveled up grapes are shriveled by our heat. The adjunct of the fires all around us, the smoke clogging the air for weeks and weeks and our supersized sizzling summer heat made me delve once more into attempts to make this refreshing, cooling beverage.

So the first thing to know is: the orange color is just food color. It's there so restaurant staff can tell the Iced Tea from the Iced Coffee. Yes, I know. Disappointing ... but there it is. Years of disbelief broken by the acceptance: Orange isn't the New Tea.

Now we have that out of the way the next bump is: the ingredients list. It's small. It's so small I fully believed there was some hidden ingredient left out. There isn't. It's all there. Minus the orange food coloring of course. ³

Not Really Thai Iced Tea

5 cups of very hot or boiling water
6 black tea bags (1 for each cup and 1 for the pot)
2-4 Star Anise pods ⁴
2-4 Cardamom pods (omit if the tea is already cardamom flavored)
1/4 - 1/3 cup Sugar (or more, adjust to taste)

Ice (lots of it)
Creams: half and half, condensed sweetened, coconut milk

The Ingredients

Tea Types

You can buy cardamom flavored tea. I had quite a bit of this that I drank as regular flavored tea. Some black with cardamom teas also have saffron in them. You can use just plain black tea or branch out into the land of earl grey.

Flavorings

Dried Star Anise Seeds

The key ingredient is Star Anise. I am not a fan of licorice flavor but Star Anise is what makes the resulting brew fantastic.

If you buy tea flavored with cardamom you can omit the extra cardamom pods.

Sweetening the Deal

The resulting tea is meant to be served over a lot of ice and with topping of cream. If you don't have enough sweetener in the brew the tea will taste weak and uninteresting. The sugar and cream help the tea remain flavorful and not get watered down.

It isn't like American Iced Tea which is brown weak flavored cold water. This is tea with a punch to it that lasts.

Preparation

Put the tea, the star anise, the cardamom and the sugar in the hot water and let it steep for 15-30 minutes. I put a lid on the pot while steeping.

You can make this sun-tea style by dumping everything into a glass jar and setting it in a sunny spot letting it sit for a long time.

The longer it sits the stronger the flavor. It will get very dark in color. Taste test for sweetness: more is better than less.

When the brew has steeped enough or the water has cooled, strain out the tea bags and star anise and put the brew in a pitcher and set in the fridge until it is cold.

The brewed tea will keep for a week in the fridge.

Serving it Up

Use a medium glass filled with ice cubes. Pouring the cold tea over the ice cubes, fill the glass about 1/4 full with the tea.

Top the tea with a splash of cream. The cream will swirl into the tea and mix as you swirl the glass in your hand.

Adjust as needed: more ice, more cream, top it up and sip it all day.

Layered Cream:
for that Professional Look

To layer the cream over the tea, use an upside down tablespoon with the round part upwards and the end of the spoon touching the glass. SLOWLY pour the cream over the back of the spoon so that it slides down the spoon tip into the glass. Pouring too fast will have the cream cascade into the tea.

References

1. Thai tea
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_tea
2. We found out later on an un-chaperoned visit to the same restaurant. We ordered just a few of the same dishes. We needed major fire extinguishers and abandoned most of our meal. We resolved not to return unattended by our Thai friends. They, however, enjoyed a huge laugh about our adventure.
3. Feel free to add your own food coloring if you desire. Orange is a mix of red and yellow. If you must have that Orange Tint, try to use food colorings that are organically made.
   •Yellow-orange consists of two parts yellow and one part red .
   •Red-orange consists of two parts red and one part yellow.
4. Star Anise
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illicium_verum



Thai Tea for A Hot Day