What Is Po Cha? Know Everything About This Salty Tibetan Tea

Known for its saltiness rather than its sweetness, Tibetan butter tea is an acquired taste and has a completely unexpected flavor. It is best enjoyed on a cold day as it provides you with the warmth you need. Po Cha is made with pu-erh, a form of fermented black tea compressed into bricks, along with yak milk, yak butter and with salt mined from Tibet’s famous lakes. 

If you are someone who wants to try this salty tea, here is how you can prepare it. 

Traditional way of preparing Po Cha 

In Tibet, the traditional process of making butter tea takes a long time. It can also be a little complicated. People use a special black tea that comes from an area called Pemagul in Tibet. It comes in bricks of different shapes. All you need to do is to crumble it and then boil it for several hours. 

Save this liquid which you have created from boiling. Whenever you want to prepare this tea, add some of that liquid, called chaku, to the boiling water. For the butter and milk, Tibetans prefer to use it from the female of the yak species rather than cow’s milk. 

This is done to add a more pungent flavor than cow’s milk or butter. Serve the tea right away since po cha is best when served hot. 

Making butter tea outside Tibet

Ingredients required: 

• 4 cups of water
• Plain black tea 
• Teaspoon salt
• Butter (salted or unsalted)
• Milk

Recipe:

• First bring four cups of water to a boil.
• Put two bags of tea or two heaping tablespoon of loose tea in the water and let steep while the water is boiling for a couple of minutes. 
• Add a heaping quarter of a teaspoon of salt.
• Take out the tea bags or if you use loose tea, strain the tea grounds.
• Add a third to a half cup of milk or a teaspoon of milk powder.
• Now turn off the stove.
• Pour your tea mixture, along with two tablespoons of butter, into a chandong, which is a kind of churn. Since churns are kind of rare outside of Tibet, you can do what some Tibetans do, which is to use any big container with a lid, so you can shake the tea, or you can just use a blender, which works very well. 
• Churn, blend or shake the mixture for two or three minutes. In Tibet, we think the po cha tastes better if you churn it longer.