Skip to main content

Chai Karak, or Karak tea is available throughout the Arabian Gulf area. All of clients sipping tea and enjoying the fragrant taste. If you live in those areas, it’s like Tim Hortons line up, you will find endless rows of cars lining up for a small cup of the creamy fragrant Chai Karak and thousands of cups are sold daily. At night, Chai Karak is enjoyed in coffee shops listening to classical Arab diva, Um Kalthoum. The atmosphere around a good tea selling shop is electric and so much fun to watch.

Chai Karak Popularity

The humble beginnings of the drink came with the influx of South Eastern Asian workers upon the discovery of oil in the early 1950s. A tea that is prepared daily there, named ‘masala chai’, using a variety of spices including cardamom, peppercorn, saffron, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, anis.  Chai Karak, translates into strong tea. Versions of chai karak are prepared in South Asian homes daily. It’s a tea culture that traces back to before colonial times making tea vital in every household pantry. A blend of strong black tea, milk, sugar and cardamom, it is prepared by boiling this combination together on a low flame.  

Chai Karak spreadRecipe For You

If you’d like to attempt making this drink at home, here’s a simple recipe or you:  

  • In your tea pot, mix 2 teaspoons of loose black tea or 3 tea bags and add 3 cups of water  
  • Add a fat pinch of cardamom powder, about ¼ teaspoon
  • Put the same amount of cinnamon
  • Include 4 strands of saffron
  • Optional spices to add are cloves of carnation, ginger and anis star
  • Top with sugar to sweeten and boil for 2 minutes
  • Add evaporated milk or condensed milk until you get a creamy caramel colour
  • Boil further for two minutes and simmer and repeat two more times
  • Pour the tea in a cup through a strainer
  • Savour your delicious Karak Tea 

The Spices

Cardamom is the main spice in Yafa Café, used in our dishes, in our honey cardamom latte and in our karak tea. The cardamom is believed to have many health benefits. It is said to relieve:

  • bloating
  • heartburn
  • nausea
  • reduces inflammation in the body
  • lowers blood pressure

Nothing can beat the karak in winter and it is loved. Give it a go with your favourite Yafa Café dessert.

Chair karak tea at Yafa Café

Help our restaurant thrive!

Order up:

Leave a review on:

Check out our social media:

error

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)