Dairy Free Pink Chai

Dairy Free Pink Chai is tea from the Kashmir Valley, in South Asia. It is rich and creamy. Pink Chai is called pink because of its distinctive pink colour.

The traditional way of making this tea is by boiling and reducing the tea for many hours. You then shock this tea concentrate with cold water and heavily aerate it before combining it with milk and salt to make the Pink Chai.

The more modern approach is to add whole spices like star anise, cinnamon, cloves and green cardamom. And then boiled with milk to make the tea. It is then served with nuts and sugar.

Pink Chai is traditionally called Noon Chai because it was prepared with salt only (Noon = Salt) but over the years people have started adding sugar giving it a sweeter taste. It is often called Kashmiri chai as well because of where it originates from.

Making Allergen Free Chai

As you can see traditional tea uses milk and nuts. To make the chai allergen free you can use dairy free milk alternative. I have used dairy free 50/50 beverage to make it thicker and creamier. The thicker and creamier the chai the better it is. You can also use coffee creamer or regular dairy free milk.

Nuts are only used as a topping so you can always leave out the nuts to make it nut free. However, If you can consume nuts, they add a nice nutty taste.

Sweeteners to use with Dairy Free Pink Chai

To enhance the flavour of Pink Chai, adding a sweetener can be a great way to make it even more enjoyable. The combination of sweet and salty tastes gives the Pink Chai a unique flavour.

There are many options available when it comes to sweetening Pink Chai, you can use the following

• honey
• maple syrup, or
• brown sugar.

Each of these sweeteners has its own unique characteristics and will add a different flavor profile to the tea. By experimenting with different combinations of sweeteners and Pink Chai, you can find the perfect combination for your taste buds!

Storing the Dairy Free Pink Chai

So once you have aired the tea, you can stop the cooking process just before adding the dairy free milk. You can store the tea in the fridge or even freeze it in a freezer safe container.

When you are ready to make the tea, just warm it up and add the milk and bring it to a boil.

Serving Suggestions

Serve this tea with these sweet treats from the blog:

• Gluten-Free & Nut-Free Snowball Cookies
• Homemade AllergyFriendly Cinnamon Doughnuts
• Homemade Dairyfree ‘Bounty’ Balls

Dairy Free Pink Chai

Course: Recipes, DrinksCuisine: Pakistani, Indian, KashmiriDifficulty: Difficult

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

5

minutes

Cooking time

1

hour 

Calories

71

kcal

Total time

1

hour 

5

minutes

Dairy Free Pink Chai is tea from the Kashmir Valley, In South Asia which is pink in colour. It is rich and creamy.

Ingredients

• 3 cups ice cold water

• 3 teaspoons of kashmiri tea leaves

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 6 green cardamoms

• cinnamon stick

• 1 star anise

• dairy free milk, as required

• salt, to taste

• sugar

• Topping

• slivered almonds (optional)

• pistachios (optional)

Steps

• Boil the water with tea leaves, cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon
• Once the water starts boiling add the baking soda
• Keep cooking until only about a cup of tea is left
• Then add 3 more cups of ice cold water or ice, and cook for 15 more minutes, keep stirring to aerate the mixture
• You can store this mixture in the fridge if not drinking straight away
• To drink straight away, bring 3/4 cups dairy free milk to boil in another sauce pan, then add 1/4 cup of the tea.
• Serve hot, with sugar, salt and nuts

Recipe Video

Cook’s Notes

• You can add ice cubes instead of cold water to the reduced tea mixture.

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