Afghani Pink Milk Tea (Qaimaq Chai)

Afghani Pink Milk Tea

...and inadvertent lessons in chemistry.

If you look up Afghani tea, you will find some really pretty pictures of a pink tea ranging from vaguely pink to really bright pink. How do you make it? Well, here are the ingredients for the tea portion:

Ah yes, the usual. Some sort of tea (this time green tea), good old cardamom with the mortar and pestle waiting in the background, and baking soda. Wait a minute, WHAT?! Are we making tea or cookies today? Well, I'm just following directions. A little skeptically at this point, but here we go. I read some blogs about gross retro recipes, and I feel like I'm looking at a contender, but I will trust that the people in Afghanistan know what they are doing, and make it. After all, for the people who like to actually cook those recipes and taste them, some really do work quite well.

I went with the instructions with the shorter video. The one that can be brewed in less than an hour. I started with 2-3 cups (500-750 ml) of water. Sorry, didn't measure, just eyeballed it. It was probably closer to 3 cups. Anyway, I boiled the water and added my ingredients. I opted to use a tea bag rather than loose leaf because I didn't know what I was in for with this project. Then 4 cracked cardamom pods, and a scant 1/8 tsp of baking soda. I watched the baking soda fizz and swirl as I placed the tea on a warm burner, and covered it for 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes I took out the tea bag and had this. It does have a bit of a rosy color.

Hmm. I put about 1/2 cup (125 ml) of milk in the bottom of a small sauce pan. I also added a little sugar - probably 1 tsp or slightly less. I'm normally skeptical of sugar in tea, but baking soda is salty - I know that. All the recipes caution against using too much. I also gave a sprinkle of ground cardamom on top.

Then I started to slowly ladle in the tea. You're supposed to add enough tea to get a nice pink color. If the pink color starts to fade, add more milk. Well, I didn't want to waste any more milk than I already was, so I was a bit slow in adding my tea, but you know what? It really did turn a delicate shade of pink!

Unfortunately the camera really couldn't capture it well, but it's pink, I swear. Anyway, I gently heated my milk with tea, and ladled it into a cup. This is normally served with a dollop of thick cream out of a can. I didn't have any. I did have some small cubes of whipping cream in my freezer. I needed a small amount of cream for a recipe a while ago, and thought it was a waste to throw the rest out. So, I opted to toss one in.

Woo, pink tea! I took a sip. It didn't taste like a big cup of baking soda. There was definitely something in there, but it was very understated. It was actually pretty good. I will admit that the cream had a bit of the freezer taste to it, so I dumped this cup and tried another one without. Then I had a second cup. Afghanistan pulled out a win on this one.

Then I decided to try brewing green tea the same way without the baking soda. The cup on the left looks the way I remember green tea looking. From the resources I viewed, it seems the more baking soda you add, the more pink it gets. While I know baking soda in water was a way people used to use to settle their stomachs, I think I would still stick to ginger tea rather than go nuts with the baking soda in green tea. It was a neat experiment none the less.

This seems like one of those recipes that was found by accident and caught on. I never would have thought of making my green tea with a bit of baking soda, but it really changes the color, and makes for another fun tea trick.