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EveryCow

Milk drinks

Suutei tsai

Mongolian salty milk tea, boiled in a pan and ladled high to mix, the first thing offered in every ger.

Suutei tsai is Mongolian milk tea: green or brick tea boiled in water, with milk and salt added and the whole ladled up and poured back many times to blend it. Some households add butter, roasted millet or dried curd. It is drunk with every meal, and a bowl is handed to any guest who enters a ger, held with the right hand supported by the left.

What goes in

Water: 43%43%Cow or yak milk: 29%29%Brick or green tea: 14%14%Salt: 7%Butter or roasted millet: 7%5parts
  • Water643%, Boiled first.
  • Cow or yak milk429%, Added once the tea is strong.
  • Brick or green tea214%, Crumbled into the pot.
  • Salt17%, To taste.
  • Butter or roasted millet17%, In some households.

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: Milk Milk the cows or yaks in the morning.
  2. Step 2: Boil Boil water with crumbled tea until it is dark.
  3. Step 3: Cook Add milk and salt and bring it back to the boil.
  4. Step 4: Cook Lift ladlefuls high and pour them back many times to mix and aerate.
  5. Step 5: Serve Strain into bowls and serve with both hands.
  6. Water: 43%43%Cow or yak milk: 29%29%Brick or green tea: 14%14%Salt: 7%Butter or roasted millet: 7%
    Finished Suutei tsai, by share.

A herder household

Mongolian herders keep cattle, yak, sheep, goats, horses and camels, and the milk of each has its use. Cow and yak milk go into tea and into a range of dairy foods called tsagaan idee, white foods. The tea is made in the morning in a large pot on the stove at the centre of the ger and kept warm in a flask through the day.

The first offering

In many families the first of the morning's tea or milk is flicked to the sky and the directions with a wooden spoon with nine hollows, called a tsatsal, as an offering to the spirits and a wish for safe journeys. The same gesture is made when a family member leaves on a long trip.

Where it is used

With every mealFor guests in the gerMorning offering

The breeds behind it

YakKept by herders in the Khangai and Altai mountains.KalmykSteppe breed believed to come from Dzungaria.

Also part of it, and being written: Mongolian cattle (Hardy native cattle of the steppe.).

More on EveryCow

No breeds here yet. New pages are added every day.

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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