💬 Tea bag in microwaved milk is not chai

My office kitchen has a kettle, a box of tea bags and a microwave. That's the chai setup. Last Tuesday a colleague made me one. Tea bag, cold milk, 90 seconds in the microwave. She handed it over so proudly. I drank the whole thing and said thank you. It tasted like warm milk that had heard about tea once. I'm still not over it. Real chai is boiled. Leaves, water, milk and sugar go in the pot together and stay there. You watch it rise, you pull it off the flame, you let it settle and put it back. My grandmother did this 3 times every morning for 50 years and never owned a timer. You can smell it from the street. A tea bag smells like a stationery shop. So I found an Indian grocery store 25 minutes away by bus and bought loose leaf Red Label. The owner looked at me like I'd found a long lost brother. We talked about milk for 10 minutes. I bought a small steel pot too, 1 litre, from the shelf near the rice. It cost more than the tea. Now I boil a cup before work in the morning. My flat smells like home. Two colleagues tried it last week. One said it was too strong. The other had 3 cups. I'm not saying tea bags are bad for everybody. Some people like them. Those people are wrong. My mother says I sound like her when I talk about this. I didn't love hearing that. Anyway the pot is clean and drying on the rack. Tomorrow it's 7:30 again.

Disagree a little here, I grew up on the quick method since my grandmother always said boiling milk too long ruins it rather than improves it. Both versions have their place, the long simmer for a lazy Sunday and the quick version on a weekday morning when nobody has fifteen minutes to stand at the stove watching a pot.

Boiled together properly is the only way I accept chai too, my mother refuses to even own a tea bag in the house on principle. Tried the quick method once while staying at a friend's place and it tasted thin to me, missing that thickness you get from letting everything simmer long enough. Went back to making my own the very next morning instead.

Agree, and the sugar matters as much as the leaves. Too little and it just tastes unfinished. My father puts 2 spoons in a small cup. My wife puts half a spoon. Every visit there's a small war. She now makes 2 pots when he comes. His is basically syrup. He says hers tastes like medicine. They're both wrong, by the way. It's 1 and a half spoons.