Pudina Chai: A Reimagined Indian Mint Tea Recipe
Share
Kitchen on board ⚓
Pudina Chai: our reimagined Indian mint tea
A fresh and fragrant adaptation made with our Gunpowder green tea & peppermint.
The name can be confusing when you hear it for the first time.
Pudina Chai has nothing to do with pudding.
The word pudina means mint in Hindi, while chai simply means tea. So it literally means mint tea.
In India, this drink exists in several homemade forms: with black tea, with or without milk, sometimes with ginger or cardamom, and almost always with plenty of mint.
🌿 Pudina = mint
Our version is a Cap sur le Thé interpretation inspired by Indian Pudina Chai.
Our Cap sur le Thé version
For this recipe, we chose to start not with an Indian black tea, but with our Traversée Mentholée.
This blend combines China Gunpowder green tea with peppermint. It already provides the structure of tea and a pronounced minty freshness.
The result therefore deliberately moves away from a strict traditional recipe to become a homemade adaptation, livelier and more vegetal.
If you would like to better understand the differences between the major tea families, you can also consult our guide Black tea: what is it, what does it taste like and how to choose it?.
Ingredients
- 6 to 8 g of Traversée Mentholée
- 500 ml of water
- Sugar, honey or maple syrup to taste
- A few fresh mint leaves, optional
- 1 thin slice of ginger, optional
- 2 cardamom pods, lightly crushed, optional
- A splash of warm milk, optional
Traversée Mentholée already contains peppermint. Add fresh mint only if you want to further accentuate the freshness.
How to prepare our Pudina Chai?
Heat the water
Heat the 500 ml of water without letting it boil excessively.
Add Traversée Mentholée
Add 6 to 8 g of Traversée Mentholée and let steep for about 2 to 3 minutes.
Add spices if you wish
Ginger or cardamom can be added in small quantities to bring the drink closer to certain Indian chai preparations.
Sweeten
Add a little sugar, honey or maple syrup to taste.
Strain and serve
Strain directly into the cups. Serve plain or add a little warm milk for a rounder version.
Watch the steeping time
As Traversée Mentholée uses Gunpowder green tea, steeping for too long can make the cup more bitter or more astringent.
To learn more, consult our guide How long to steep tea?.
And if your tea becomes too bitter, our article Why is your tea bitter? will help you understand what happened.
Pudina Chai, mint tea and infusion: the same thing?
Not quite.
Pudina Chai contains real tea, so Camellia sinensis leaves.
A simple mint infusion, on the other hand, does not necessarily contain tea.
This difference is explained in more detail in our article Tea or infusion: what are the differences?.
With or without milk?
Both work.
Without milk, the mint and the vegetal character of the Gunpowder stand out more.
With a little milk, the drink becomes rounder and comes closer to certain Indian chai drinks.
Indian Pudina Chai and Moroccan mint tea
Both drinks use mint, but their traditions are not identical.
Moroccan mint tea is very often prepared with Gunpowder green tea, fresh mint and sugar.
Indian Pudina Chai is more varied and can use black tea, milk or certain spices.
Our version with Traversée Mentholée therefore deliberately sits at the crossroads of these two worlds.
⚓ Kitchen on board
A recipe inspired by India, reimagined with a tea of our own selection.
Sources & verifications
The term Pudina Chai refers to a mint tea in Indian usage. Preparations vary by family and region, with or without milk and sometimes with spices.
- References dedicated to Indian mint tea and chai preparations.
- Botanical documentation on the different mint species.
- Composition of the Traversée Mentholée product verified in the Cap sur le Thé shop.
