A Nice Cuppa

Butter Tea or Po Cha is a staple of Tibetan life. Several cups or rather bowls of this black tea, milk, salt and butter concoction are consumed every morning. Because of the butter, the drink is high in calories and thus provides energy for work throughout the day. 

I think I’m drawn to the idea of butter tea because of my memories of my great grandmother who used to drink her tea along with Nabisco’s Royal Lunch Milk Crackers spread with butter. I will never forget the creamy taste of the tea with the oil slick of butter floating on the top after dunking the crackers. This was mandatory according to grammy. She wouldn’t agree with the idea of cutting out the middle man though. The buttery tea was a byproduct of dunking, you didn’t purposely put the butter in the tea.

Well, if you’re interested in making butter tea you might have trouble following traditional recipes since they call for yak butter. This version is updated to allow for local ingredients and modern “mixing” methods. Traditionally, the concoction is made in a churn but since I’ve retired my churn along with my cotton gin, a cocktail shaker will have to do.

Make a regular cup of unflavored black tea and put it in a mixer or a container with a tight fitting cover. (Please be careful when shaking hot beverages)
include a small pinch of salt, a teaspoon of butter, and some milk. Shake the tea, salt, butter and milk in the shaker for 15 seconds. This emulsifies the butter so that it doesn’t rise to the top of the tea and cause the butter slick I described above.

I’m very curious to hear what others think of this tea. There is no way to capture the true Tibetan Butter Tea flavor so I’m sure purists will find issue with the above recipe. However, if you have suggestions on how to improve on it, I would love to hear them.