Thandai: More than just a Holi cooler

Under the sweltering heat with sweat trickling down your face, which is splashed with a multitude of rang, sipping a refreshing and cool glass of thandai is a core memory for many revellers on Holi. It is usually served with gujiya, mathri, malpua, puranpoli or dahi vadas, depending on which community you hail from. While the kids gulp down a bhaang-free variation, adults usually enjoy their drink spiked with leaves of the cannabis plant.

Made primarily of milk, nuts, and spices, this creamy drink is prepared in different ways with each family having their own special recipe.

Chef Pravin Pandey, The Westin Mumbai Garden City, says, “Thandai helps you stay cool and transitions your body from winter to summer during the vasant month. The ingredients help boost your immunity.”

The traditional way of making thandai is on a stone slab, which brings out the flavours of the ingredients. It can be sweetened with jaggery, coconut sugar, or fruit pulp. The bhaang paste is swirled into the milk along with the thandai mix.

For thandai infused with bhaang, Manpreet Chabba, assistant director – food and beverage, Taj Mahal, New Delhi, advises using whole milk, as its fat content, along with the nuts, helps dissolve the fat-soluble cannabinoids.

Health is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of thandai, but you will be surprised to know that it can be a healthy drink, minus the additives.

“Thandai is a source of energy and the ingredients used provide us with micro and macro nutrients. It helps in digestion, constipation, treats flatulence and is good for the skin,” says nutritionist Harshita Dilawri.

It has a lot of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties because of the almonds, cashews, pistas, melon and poppy seeds, says Dr Siddhant Bhargava, fitness and nutritional scientist, but it is not the healthiest of drinks. “It is not low in calories, as it is loaded with sugar and made entirely of milk. However, it is a festival and no one really cares about the calories on this one day,” he adds

He explains that if it was made with shrikhand, curds, or milk alternatives, the drink would be a lot healthier.

While bhaang thandai can be fun, if a person has not had it before or consumed too much, they can have hypertension, sweating, heavy breathing, hypoglycaemic, or go into cardiac arrest, warns Bhargava.

Bhang Thandai Recipe

By Chef Ashwani Kumar Singh, The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, Delhi

Ingredients

Milk – 1 ltr

Almond – 100g

Char magaj – 50g

Poppy seeds – 50g

Sunflower seeds – 50g

Rose petals – 5 g

Fennel seeds – 15 g

Black peppercorn – 15

Green cardamom – 15

Nutmeg powder – ¼ tsp

Sugar – 150 g

Saffron – ½ g

Rose water – 20 ml

Bhaang leaves – 2 ½ tbsp

Method

*Pick, wash and drain the bhang leaves

*Dry roast fennel, sunflower and poppy seeds along with peppercorn, rose petals, saffron and char magaj

*Blanch and peel almond

*Soak everything in milk for one hour and freeze it

*Grind into a fine paste, strain and serve

Quick tip

*To give it a healthy twist, use non-dairy milks made from almond or oats.

*White sugar can be replaced by jaggery or coconut sugar.

*For an unconventional thandai, use fruit purées like cranberries, guava, mangoes or strawberries.