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EveryCow

Milk drinks

Butter tea

Brick tea boiled long and churned with yak butter and salt, drunk many times a day on the Tibetan plateau.

Butter tea, po cha in Tibetan, suja in Bhutan and gur gur cha in Ladakh, is strong brick tea boiled for a long time, then churned with butter and salt in a tall wooden churn until it is smooth. On the high, cold plateau it is drunk all day, and guests are offered cup after cup. The butter comes from the dri, the female yak, or from cows and yak hybrids.

What goes in

Brick tea: 18%18%Water: 47%47%Yak or cow butter: 18%18%Milk: 12%12%Salt: 6%5parts
  • Brick tea318%, Boiled long and strong.
  • Water847%, Boiled with the tea.
  • Yak or cow butter318%, Churned in.
  • Milk212%, Added in many homes.
  • Salt16%, A good pinch.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Churn Milk the dri or dzomo and churn the milk for butter.
  2. Step 2: Boil Break tea from the brick and boil it for a long time.
  3. Step 3: Strain Pour the strained tea into a wooden churn with butter and salt.
  4. Step 4: Churn Pump the plunger until the butter is fully blended.
  5. Step 5: Serve Serve hot in small bowls and refill often.
  6. Brick tea: 18%18%Water: 47%47%Yak or cow butter: 18%18%Milk: 12%12%Salt: 6%
    Finished Butter tea, by share.

Made in a churn

Compressed tea is broken from a brick and boiled to a dark brew that may be kept on the stove all day. A portion is poured into the chandong, a wooden cylinder bound with brass, with butter and salt, and pumped with a plunger. Many homes now use an electric blender. The tea is thick, salty and warm, nearer to soup than to sweet tea.

Courtesy and offering

It is polite to sip and let the host refill the cup, and to leave some in the cup when no more is wanted. Tsampa, roasted barley flour, is often mixed into the last of the tea with the fingers to make a dough. Butter is also burned in monastery lamps and shaped into sculptures for Losar, the Tibetan new year.

Where it is used

All-day drinkFor guestsWith tsampa

The breeds behind it

YakThe female dri gives the butter of the plateau.DzoYak and cow hybrid kept at middle altitudes.

Also part of it, and being written: Siri cattle (Hill cattle of Bhutan and Sikkim.).

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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