Thandai
Thandai is a cool refreshing summer drink made with sweetened full cream milk and a paste of soaked dry fruits, cardamom, saffron and rose extract.
Ingredients
For Thandai Paste
- ¼ Cup Almonds (approx 35 to 40 nos.)
- ¼ Cup Cashew Nuts (approx 20 nos.)
- 2 tbsp Pistachio
- 2 tbsp Melon Seeds
- 2 tbsp Poppy Seeds or Khus Khus
- 1 tbsp Dried Rose Petals
- 2 tsp Fennel Seeds
- 1 tsp Black Peppercorns
- 10-12 nos. Large Green Cardamom
- 1 cup Water
For Thandai
- 2.5 Litre Milk preferably Full Cream
- 1¼ Cup Sugar
- Saffron large pinch
- 5-6 tsp Rose Water
- Chopped Pistachio nuts and Rose petals for garnishing
Instructions
- Take all the ingredients mentioned in the Thandai paste in a bowl.
- Add 1 cup of hot water to the ingredients and let it soak for at least 4 to 5 hours.
- Peel the skin of the almonds. Blend the soaked ingredients along with the water in a mixer grinder till it is a fine paste.
- The paste must be as smooth as possible. Keep this thandai paste aside.
- Dissolve a large pinch of saffron in around half a cup of hot milk and mix well. Press the saffron well and it should get fully dissolved.
- In a large pan, boil the full cream milk and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes.
- Now add the saffron milk and sugar and mix well.
- Next add the thandai paste and mix well and cook on low flame for 10-15 minutes
- Now let this cool down and rest for at least 30 minutes to an hour till the flavours are absorbed well in the milk.
- Now filter the thandai through a sieve to get rid of the coarse fibres.
- The residue from filtering process can be discarded.
- Finally mix the rose water to the filtered thandai and refrigerate it for a minimum for 4 to 5 hours before serving.
- For serving the thandai, granish with chopped pistachio nuts, few strands of saffron or kesar and some dried or fresh rose petals.
Notes
- Soak the ingredients for a minimum for 4 to 5 hours, so that it can be blend to a smooth paste. You could also soak the ingredients overnight.
- You may adjust the ingredients according to your taste. You can also skip ingredients like poppy seeds or fennel seeds if you don't like the taste of it.
- Peel the almonds before grinding it.
- It is important to boil the thandai paste with milk and also later rest for around 1 hour before filtering it, to get the maximum absorption of the thandai paste in milk.
- Addition of rose water is quite important to flavour the thandai. Add this only after filtering it and just before refrigerating. Do not add at the time of cooking thandai.
- If you feel the thandai is too thick for you after refrigerating it, you could add some more chilled milk and sugar as required. Thandai is usually slightly thick.
- You could also add other ingredients like pan and gulkand to the base mix to make Pan and Gulkand flavoured Thandai.