EAT IN ASIA / Destinations / Thailand
How to make a Thai milk tea - step by step - recipe
Guess what is on the picture! Is it a milk carrot shake? Or is it an orange milky juice? Or is it a regular milk with a colorful syrup? Or maybe is it a tea? In this post we will solve the mystery and reveal the recipe for making it at home. Here you will also find a complete and a fully tested recipe giving you step by step instructions on how to prepare an ideal Thai milk tea. So, let’s start.
How did we find it?
Ice tea and coffee is extremely popular in Asia. Sold in cups, bags or bottles, these drinks are just everywhere. We loved these bottled teas from Japan (10 TOP Japanese bottled teas) and have already had a lot of them in China and Taiwan. Now it is time for Thailand too.
Well, finding it in Thailand is not difficult. Walking around, just strolling or passing close to different schools, universities, and offices, you will see Thai people with big white and orange plastic cups with a lot of ice. This ice-cold drink is so popular, that it is hard not to spot it if you are at least a little bit observant to what is happening around you.
This drink was a mystery for us just from the beginning. As it did not resemble anything that might make sense, it was even more interesting. Definitively it had to contain some kind of milk. No matter whether a regular cow milk, soy milk, almond or coconut milk, one of them should be there. But the orange ingredient was still mysterious. Was it a carrot? Was it an orange fruit? Or maybe was it something else? The easiest way to reveal the mystery was just to ask and try it. And that is what we did.
Thai milk tea
The answer we got was very simple. It was tea! To be more precise, it was a Thai milk tea. You can easily imagine how a standard milk tea looks like and you will probably be surprised by what you see in Thailand. If you compare this Thai one with the one you know, it will definitively be something completely different. All experiences you had had till that time will have to be updated. A regular milk tea is a little bit brownish, more or less it has a color similar to the color of a weak milk coffee or to a highly diluted cappuccino. However, none of these two drinks is orange. So, when you find out that this orange drink is a tea, and it is a real tea, with no artificial colorants, you can be really surprised.
What is a Thai milk tea?
Thai milk tea is a very popular Thai drink sold in many local eateries. It is sold at street stalls and in many local restaurants.
Tea in a Thai milk tea
Thai milk tea is made of a regular Ceylon tea or from a wild Assam one. It is usually served over ice. It is sweet and served with milk.
Milk in a Thai milk tea
Depending on the place where you buy Thai milk tea, this tea might get its sweetness from sugar, from an artificial sweetener, from a sweet syrup, or from a sweetened condensed milk.
The milk that is used in a Thai milk tea can vary from place to another. Usually, you will get a combination of two different milk types. The first one will be a sweetened condensed milk and the second one will be an unsweetened one, but still condensed. Sometimes there is an option to choose between an unsweetened condensed milk and a fresh one, but that is much less popular. Some places replace this unsweetened condensed milk with a powder milk.
Sweeteners in a Thai milk tea
The original Thai milk tea is relatively sweet. Although the tea in itself is not sweet at all and is brewed separately without any sugar, all extra ingredients add sweetness to the drink.
This sweetness can derive from different sources. The first and the basic one is this obtained from sugar. As mentioned above, sometimes a regular sugar can be replaced by a syrup. Another source of the sweetness is milk. This sweetened condensed milk is a real base and is something that is hardly ever skipped. The first reason for that is that this kind of milk is more resistant to high temperatures than a regular fresh milk. This means, that the seller does not need to have a special fridge or any cooling place for a fresh milk. The only cooling element on the stand is a freezer for delivered ice cubes.
How to make a traditional Thai milk tea?
First of all, get all ingredients and utensils that you will need.
Utensils you need for preparing a Thai milk tea:
- Stove and a kettle or a coffee machine
- Spoon for stirring
- Mug for a brewed tea
- Mug for milk
- Drinking cup
- A cup with a measure for ideal proportions
- Straw
Ingredients for a Thai milk tea:
- Serving of a Thai tea – a Ceylon one or an Assam one
- Fresh milk
- Condensed milk sweetened
- Condensed milk unsweetened
- Sugar or a sweet flavorless syrup
- Ice cubes
How to make a cold Thai milk tea – recipe with step-by-step instructions
- Fill the coffee machine portafilter with Thai tea leaves
- Place an intermediate teacup below
- Brew your tea
- Measure condensed sweetened milk – take 50 ml and pour it to the final teacup
- Measure condensed sweetened milk – take 50 ml and pour it to the final teacup
- Mix together both milks
- Measure fresh milk – take 200 ml and pour it to the final teacup
- Mix together all kinds of milk
- Optionally add some sugar or some sugar syrup according to your preferences
- Mix again all ingredients
- Put ice cubes to the final teacup – fill it till the top
- Take brewed tea from the intermediate cup and pour it slowly over the milk with ice cubes
- Top your Thai milk tea with an additional milk creamer or with an unsweetened condensed milk – that step is up to you and an optional one
- Taste it without mixing and start drinking your ideal Thai style drink. Keep it in an unmixed form for a while or drink as a regular Caffè Latte
