For most people, Tibetan butter tea — po cha — is an acquired taste, since it is salty rather than sweet, and has a completely unexpected flavor.

Many non-Tibetans don’t care for it much at first, but come to love it when it is associated with warmth on a cold day and good times spent with Tibetan friends, or the adventure of travel in Tibet or Tibetan communities in India or Nepal.

Some non-Tibetans find it helpful to think of it as a sort of light soup rather than as tea.

This way, your mind isn’t so shocked when you drink it! Anyway, the recipe is very simple and easy to try.

The Traditional Way of Preparing Butter Tea

In Tibet, the traditional process of making butter tea can take a long time and is pretty complicated.

People use a special black tea that comes from an area called Pemagul in Tibet.
The tea comes in bricks of different shapes, and we crumble off some tea and boil it for many hours.

We save the liquid from the boiling and then whenever we want to make tea, we add some of that liquid, called chaku, to our boiling water.

For the butter and milk, Tibetans prefer to use butter and milk from the female of the yak species, which in Tibet are called dri, than cow’s milk or butter.
Often mistakenly called “yak butter” and “yak milk,” these have a more pungent flavor than cow’s milk or butter, with a taste closer to goat milk or cheese.