Butter Tea (Po Cha)

Butter tea, known in Tibetan as po cha (བོད་ཇ་, "Tibetan tea"), is a churned, salted tea of the Tibetan plateau and the wider Himalaya, made by whipping brewed dark tea with butter — traditionally the butter of the yak or dri — and salt into a warm, opaque, soup-like drink. Bricks of fermented dark tea are boiled long and hard, the strong reddish-brown decoction is poured into a tall wooden churn with a lump of butter and a pinch of salt, and the mixture is plunged and churned until it emulsifies into a smooth, faintly pink-to-tan liquid the consistency of thin broth. It tastes savoury and rich rather than sweet: salty, buttery and faintly tea-bitter, closer to a light broth than to a Western cup of tea. On the cold, high, dry plateau it is drunk by the bowlful all day — often many cups — as a source of warmth, salt, fat and hydration, and it is the near-inseparable partner of tsampa, the roasted-barley flour that is the staple food of the region.