Though Kenya is Africa's largest tea grower and the world's third-largest tea producer (after China and India), it is the world's single largest exporter of black tea — supplying over a fifth of all black-tea exports — yet at home the leaf is drunk almost entirely as this sweet boiled milk tea. Tea is not native: in 1903 the British settler G.W.L. Caine planted Kenya's first tea bushes at Limuru near Nairobi as an experiment, and in 1924 Malcolm Fyers Bell, sent by Brooke Bond, opened the first commercial estates on the Rift Valley highlands at Kericho. Cultivation stayed a colonial monopoly until 1956, when African smallholders were finally permitted to grow tea; Kericho is now Kenya's tea capital. The custom of boiling tea, milk, water and sugar together arrived with Indian migrants and labourers settling in East Africa — even the word chai is borrowed from Hindi — and was long ago absorbed as a thoroughly Kenyan daily drink.
Warm and milky with a clean black-tea backbone, it carries waves of cardamom sweetness and a peppery ginger heat at the finish. Each sip is rich and soothing, the sugar rounding the spices into something cozy.
Simmering tea and spices directly in milk-water extracts both water- and fat-soluble aromatics, while the dairy proteins and sugar smooth the tannins for a rounder, fuller cup.
Variations
Ginger-forward chai ya tangawizi, all-milk strong chai, or lighter spicing with just cardamom.
On the Palate
Where Kenyan Chai sits in the Kenyan flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
8 steps · 5 min
- 14 min
Lightly crush cardamom pods, cloves and a piece of cinnamon, and grate fresh ginger.
- 23 min
Bring water and the spices to a boil in a pot.
- 34 min
Add black tea leaves and let them simmer to extract colour and flavour.
- 43 min
Pour in milk and bring back to a gentle boil, watching it does not overflow.
Watch outWatch the pot the moment milk goes in — it climbs fast and boils over in seconds; pull it back or stir the froth down.
- 54 min
Add sugar to taste and simmer a few minutes more to meld.
- 62 min
Let the tea froth up once or twice for body.
Watch outLet it rise to a foam and settle once or twice — that repeated frothing is what gives the chai its rounded, full body.
- 71 min
Strain into cups through a fine sieve.
- 81 min
Serve piping hot, ideally with mandazi or chapati.
