Butter Tea (Po Cha)

Definition

Butter tea (Tibetan po cha, Chinese suyou cha) is the everyday drink of the Tibetan plateau and neighboring Himalayan areas, including Ladakh, Bhutan and Nepal's high valleys. It is drunk many times a day, often by the dozen cups, and is the standard offering to guests. The tea is dark compressed brick tea, historically made in Ya'an and other parts of Sichuan and carried to Tibet along the Tea Horse Road, where it was traded for horses. Pieces of brick are broken off and boiled in water for a long time, sometimes half a day, to make a dark concentrate. That concentrate is poured into a tall wooden churn (chandong) with butter, traditionally from yak or dri, and salt, and plunged until the fat emulsifies into a smooth, opaque, pale drink. The result tastes more like a thin, salty broth than a tea. At high altitude it supplies fat, calories and fluid in a cold, dry climate. Tsampa, roasted barley flour, is often mixed into the last of the tea in the bowl and kneaded into a dough eaten by hand.