TeaParty.nu

This post is written by Linus Hammarstrand:

Tea has been drunk in Tibet since time immemorial. Normally it is mixed with rancid yak-butter and salt, as well as with tsampa, roasted barley flour. Assaulting as it is on the taste-buds, it makes eminent sense to drink tea this way. In the harsh, high-altitude climate of the Tibetan plateau, with an average altitude of 4000 meters above sea-level, you will fast get dehydrated and subsequently suffer from altitude sickness, which is potentially lethal.

Tsampa

Butter tea provide you with both salt, calories and water, all of which are essential for survival in what many call the “Third pole”. The tea in the picture is the type of brick-tea used to make butter tea, here presented as an offering at a Buddhist shrine.

Brick Tea

[Editor's note: Shout out to Lobsang Wangdu for Butter Tea — Recipe to Make Tibetan Tea: Po Cha.]

More Tibetan Tea0Martin Lindeskog2012-01-03 09:16:51This post is written by Linus Hammarstrand:

Tea has been drunk in Tibet since time immemorial. Normally it is mixed with rancid yak-butter and salt…

This post is by Linus Hammarstrand:

There are many things you can do with tea; there are also many things you never should do. Mixing tea with, say, ketchup, or with gravel, are patently bad ideas. The same goes, tastewise, for the butter-tea, so beloved by the Tibetans. Most Tibetans, particularly the nomads, can drink up to 20 cups of this vile brew in any given day. It is made in a huge copper kettle, by mixing brick-tea with boiling water and then adding rancid yak-butter and salt to the brew. They often also mix it with tsampa, roasted barley flour and roll the mixture into little balls in their hands.

As a guest it is extremely impolite to decline a hearty cup of butter-tea. One cup is typically bad enough, but the problem is that your host will refill your cup, again and again, even after you have only taken a sip. When this happens, it is best to drink it straight away, when it is still warm. There is only one thing worse than warm butter-tea; cold butter-tea!

Butter tea