Yak butter and more!

Tibetan food

Yak butter tea is an essential in Tibetans’ diet.  You can find it during all three meals, at home and in small shops everywhere.  The combination of yak butter, salt, tea leaves and water gives it a salty taste and a very strong smell!  The traditional way to drink butter tea is to pour it into a large bowl and have it passed between guests and after each guest takes a sip, the bowl is refilled again.  With the yak butter in the tea, there is plenty of calories in the drink, which is needed for those living in the high altitudes in Shangri-La.  The most authentic way to prepare butter tea is to pour boiled tea into a container with fresh yak butter and salt and churning it before storing it in copper pots.  Yak buttermilk is often made into soft cheese curds and yoghurt.

Tsampa, a staple made from roasted barley flour, is often eaten with the tea.  The blob of flour is placed inside a bowl some small amounts of butter tea and stirred with a finger for it to absorb the liquid.  Tibetans then eat the flour, washing it down with plenty of liquid.  There’s not much taste to the tsampa, but it’s eaten mainly to fill a hungry tummy.  For a more liquefied version, the barley flour is cooked like congee, which makes it a lot easier to digest.  Another popular item is momo, made from mashed potatoes and dough and shaped into balls with a minced meat filling.

Not surprisingly, with the high altitudes and cold winters, filling foods like noodles, dumplings, cheese made from yak milk and plenty of meat are eaten.  There isn’t much variety when it comes to vegetables, mainly stir-fried potatoes and cabbage since these can be grown at high altitudes. The Pu'er tea (great for digestion) brought in via China to Tibet did much good to the health of Tibetan's meat and oil heavy diets.