How To Make Restaurant Thai Iced Tea At Home
The only difference in our Thai tea recipe when compared to most restaurant versions is that were using a little less sugar. But really, once you get the basics down on making Thai iced tea you can customize the flavors and concentration the way you like. Its one of those recipes that is great no matter how you make it because its just so decadent and satisfying.
One of the key factors in making it like the restaurants is using authentic Thai tea mixes. These Thai tea mixes are normally dyed with yellow food coloring and thats what gives it its bright orange color. Also, Thai tea has a vanilla aroma to it. So if you want to have the brilliant orange color and flavors like most of the Thai restaurants, then this is one of the brands of Thai tea to buy: Number-One Thai Tea Mix.
Theres other brands of Thai tea mixes to buy, some weve loved, and others seemed a bit flat. Because they are imported, and it seems like everyone is having supply issues, sometimes we have to switch between whats available. Weve tried as many as we can get our hands on to find you the best Thai tea mixes to buy, Heres another great one we love: Number One Thai Tea Mix.
Heres a re-usable cloth tea filter that can also be helpful as well. We usually make large batches, so we just simmer the tea leaves in the hot water.
Why Is It So Orange
Have you ever wondered why Thai tea has such an incredibly, and overly orange tone to it?
So did I.
After I read the ingredients list on the bag of tea, I discovered that it includes some C Yellow Number 6 .
So thats the secret, its not just that its really awesome yellow tea, its a food dye that they put into the tea leaves .
I think you could make this Thai iced tea recipe with any kind of black tea, and it might just not have that orange color, but I think it would taste fine.
But on the streets of Thailand, or if you go to a Thai restaurant and order iced tea, it will always be the orange color.
Thai iced tea recipe try it today
I used about 1 tablespoon of tea leaves for this recipe.
There are a number of different ways you can steep your tea leaves, but the point to remember is you just need to steep them in hot water for a few minutes until you tea is nice and dark orange in color.
I used a tea sock, but you can even just toss your leaves into a cup of hot water, leave it for a few minutes, and then strain out the leaves.
Thai iced tea is always prepared hot, and yet its consumed cold on ice.
But rather than sticking it into the fridge or freezer and cooling the tea off, its instead poured over a cup of crushed ice before being consumed. When you make your tea, if you taste test it when its still hot, you want it to be a little stronger and sweeter than you like it, and it will become diluted as soon as it hits the ice.
Sweetening Your Milk Tea
Some of the milk teas above include sweetened condensed milk, which already contains sugar and adds a sweet, creamy taste to any tea its added to. In other cases, milk tea recipes involve a variety of different sweeteners and additions that contribute to the mellow, milky taste of these concoctions. Many people sweeten their tea with a traditional scoop of sugar. You can also use honey, brown sugar, caramel, or even maple syrup.
No matter how you take your milk tea, youll be sure to wind up with a tasty tea-based drink. Have a unique milk tea recipe? Feel free to share in the comments – we love learning about how our friends and customers prepare their tea!
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Authentic Thai Milk Tea
- 1 tablespoon of Thai tea
- 1 cup of hot water
- 2 teaspoons of sugar
- 2 teaspoon of sweetened condensed milk
- 2 teaspoons of evaporated milk
- crushed ice
- boiled boba
Preparations:
** ps: If you want to include boba in your drink, pour the boba in an empty cup first before topping it with ice and milk tea.
- 2 teaspoons of Thai Green Tea Mix
- 1 cup of hot water
- 2 -3 teaspoons of sweetened condensed milk
- crushed ice
How To Drink Thai Boba Milk Tea
It might sound a funny thing to talk about but a glass full of ice with deliciously sweet milk tea swirling on top of your boba does not make it very easy to get the boba into your mouth.
No worries the simple answer is a straw. Now you could try a regular straw and try to spear your boba with the end or use the scientific principles of suction to try to tease it out. Or just get yourself a boba straw thats specially made just big enough. Suck it up and see!
One of Thailands best loved milky drinks in contrast to the herbal tea drinks such as the Thai pandan drink and butterfly pea tea which are also worth a try.
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Kitchen Tools For This Recipe
- Kettle: Technically, you can use whichever method you prefer for heating up the water to a boil. However, when I bought my white electric Stag kettle I fell in LOVE. It is incredibly chic, the water heats up really quickly and comes in so many cute colors!
- Large Mixing Bowl: you can use any large heatproof mixing bowl for steeping the tea. Alternatively, if you want to make a single portion you can cut the recipe by ¼ and steep the tea in your mug.
- Tea Strainer or Cheese Cloth: Using a tea strainer will make steeping the tea a breeze. I did not have a tea strainer so I resorted to a fine mesh sieve and a cheese cloth which did the trick!
- Metal or glass straws: save the Earth. Use re-usable metal or glass straws.
Thai Milk Tea Pudding With Boba
Source: TikTok
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What Makes Thai Tea Different
Thai tea can be very similar to other teas if you are comparing pure tea leaves. Many peoples idea of Thai tea is the tea which is served when you ask for Thai Iced Tea. This orange colored tea is not just tea but contains a coloring as well as spices which completely change the flavor. Added to this it is made with a lot of evaporated and condensed milk and a lot of sweetning, rather than a small amount of added cows milk as British style hot tea is served.
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Thai Iced Tea Preparation
In Thailand, the classic base for Thai iced tea is a strong black tea. Nowadays, the most popular local brand is the Number One Hand Brand, which incorporates a light amount of crushed spices in addition to tea leaves. The drink is made by placing the tea in a pot lined with a pantyhose filter , brewing the leaves for a long time, then adding condensed milk and crushed ice.
Unlike a lot of other cultures’ tea preparations, Thai iced tea is not a drink that is typically made at home, according to Pim Techamuanvivit, the chef and proprietor of San Francisco’s Kin Khao. More likely, you’ll find it being sold out of street carts or coffee shops, served in glasses or plastic bags. . In the morning, you’ll often see the drink served hot, alongside fried dough for dipping whereas on hot, humid afternoons, ice is added to turn it into a stimulating cooler. Techamuanvivit offers a version of Thai iced tea at Kin Khao, and her secret is using a blend of condensed milk and regular milk to tone down the sweetness. No matter how you prepare it, though, Techamuanvivit describes the final product as consistently “silky and refreshing. It’s not profound or anything, it doesn’t take great skills to make but it’s delicious.”
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Whats In Thai Iced Tea
In general, Thai iced tea is made up of a tea mix thats steeped in hot water, then mixed traditionally with sweetened condensed milk and topped with crushed ice. However, you can also use regular white sugar or make your own simple syrup and add a milk of your choosing.
The Thai iced tea mix packets themselves have very limited labels from my experience. All of my test packets list some sort of tea , maybe sugar, and always some sort of food coloring.
Watch The Video For Making Thai Iced Tea:
Fast forward about 7 years later as Im sitting in Chicago eating Thai food and sipping my Thai iced tea. My brain light bulb pops on: We need to make Thai tea! Auntie told me how easy it was to make and why havent we made it before? Here you have it. All I can say is that if youre a fan of Thai iced tea at $3.25 a pop, then you must make this now.
Not only will you be saving a big wad of cash on a yearly basis, but youll also have a bottomless pitcher of Thai tea. This huge party pitcher will allow you to savor, sip and share with friends. This Thai iced tea recipe is so easy. Pretty much every YouTube video you see uses the same brand and shows the same steps. As far as the creamy layer goes, many people use different ingredients such as half and half or whole milk. Other options include coconut milk, sweetened condensed milk and even low-fat milk. Choose your creamy poison.
How to Make Easy Thai Iced Tea. More Photos in Recipe Box Below:
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Is Boba Bad For Health
Boba is tapioca starch which is almost pure starch and so simply carbohydrate. It has no significant vitamins or minerals that are healthy and contains practically no fiber. That does not make it bad or good for health in itself. Boba is often covered with caramel or other sweet additives that are not particularly healthy though because of their sugar content.
Thai Iced Tea Or Thai Milk Tea
Thai iced tea, also known as Thai milk tea and cha yen , is a tasty and refreshing drink sold on many streets of Thailand. If youve been here, chances are youve had this Thai drink or seen people walking around carrying a plastic bag with an orange-colored liquid inside and a straw poking out . Even if you havent been to Thailand, you may have come across Thai iced tea already, as its so popular that many Thai restaurants abroad do serve it.
This drink is creamy, refreshing, and has a really nice smell to it. If youve just had, say, tom yum goong, Thai chicken panang curry, Thai basil chicken, Thai garlic pork, or Thai beef green curry for a meal, cha yen is such an amazing drink to wash that all down. Oh and if you really love the taste of Thai tea, dont forget to check out my Thai Tea Cheesecake recipe!
Fun Fact: You can also have this drink hot. But without ice, we tend to call this very same drink cha nom ron which translates to hot milk tea .
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Thai Iced Tea How To Make It
My favorite orange-colored tea! Thai iced tea is sweet, creamy and oh so refreshing! No wonder why its become such an iconic summer drink and the good news is, its very easy to make!
When I lived in Bangkok my two favorite drinks were lime soda and Thai iced tea, which is called cha yen in Thai.
I must have drank gallons and gallons of these sweet beverages during my 6 months in Bangkok.
While lime sodas were mostly for days on the beach in Phuket, Thai iced teas were for the city when I would do my shopping in crowded street markets. In southeast Asia, its served in small clear plastic bags tied with a red string that you wrap around your wrist and drink through a straw. To me, cha yen is the street food/drink version of pad thai cheap, delicious and best when its kept simple.
How To Get The Perfect Orange Thai Iced Tea Coloring Without Food Dye
Turmeric! Believe it or not, this spice commonly used in Southeast Asian cuisines such a curry works equally well in Thai tea. Sprinkling the potent powder into your recipe will naturally dye the tea the delicious beautiful burnt orange color without the potential health consequences.
While turmeric does have a strong flavor it doesnt overpower this Thai tea mixture. It blends perfectly with the other flavorings.
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Health Benefits Of Thai Tea
Thai tea is brewed from black tea which contains potassium, choline, and magnesium. This makes it a good relief for people with heart disorders and inflammations. It can also help with obesity and high blood pressure.
It also has antioxidant content. Antioxidants help protect your cells from being damaged, preventing your body from having illnesses like macular degeneration, cancer, Alzheimers cardiovascular diseases. Below are other health benefits
What Are The Varieties Of Tea
There are three overarching varieties of tea: China, Assam and Indo-China, and then 3,000 hybrid varieties of tea, each of them coming with their own specific characteristics.
There are five types of Assam, the light-leaved, the dark-leaved, the Manipuri, the Burma and the Lushai. The Indo-China variety is sometimes referred to as the Cambodian or Southern form.
Tea is harvested and processed into any of the four types of tea, which are black, green, oolong, and white. Experienced pickers can harvest around 60 lb of tea by hand per day.
Black tea is withered, fully oxidized and dried. Black teas, including English Breakfast and Darjeeling, yield a hearty, amber-colored brew.
Green tea does not include any oxidizing step. It is simply withered, then dried. Its taste is more delicate and its color is pale green and golden.
Oolong tea, which is popular in China, is withered, partially oxidized, and then dried. Oolong sits between black and green tea in terms of color and taste.
White tea is the least processed. It is a rather rare tea, which mainly comes from China, as well as Sri Lanka. White tea is not oxidized, but simply withered and dried by steaming.
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How To Make Boba Milk Tea Or Thai Bubble Tea
This is the type of Thai Milk Tea, that you would normally get if you ordered Cha Yen from a Thai Street Food vendor.
All you need to do to make Boba Milk Tea is to prepare the Boba and then add it into the cup before you add the ice in step 4 above.
You may stir up the Boba in the tea before adding the frothing as well if you want to pretty it up. And adding Boba on top of the froth is yet another serving option.
Whichever way you do it you will now have made Thai Boba Milk Tea. Just add your Boba Straws and you are ready to go.
Mixing The Tea & Serve
Pour the evaporated and sweetened condensed milk mixture into the tea and stir. Add a tablespoon each of brown sugar and creamer and mixes together well.
Brown sugar adds a little depth to the drink but you can leave it out altogether or adjust the amount to your taste as you want. The creamer gives the tea is smooth taste but once again you can leave this out if you prefer. The drink will taste a little less smooth but it still tastes perfectly fine and that is how one of our family prefers it.
Pour the sweet, milky tea into the cup full of crushed ice and watch the ice start to melt, topping up with more ice as necessary
Stir the tea thoroughly together and then top off with the frothy evaporated milk you made or mix the tea into a homogenous color before adding the frothy milk topping.
Serve!
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Is There A Risk Of Drinking Thai Tea
Thai tea undoubtedly contains nutrients that give so many health benefits, it is nutritious and tasty, however many have wondered if there is any risk attached to drinking it.
There is not a single health risk in drinking Thai tea, as long as it is in the right quantity. However it has significant caffeine content, so if you have heart issues or do not like tea with caffeine then you should not drink this.