Tibetan Tea - Yak Butter Substitute

[Herb_Master]

OK
So I have ordered some tibetan tea
Yunnan Sourcings Tibetan Flame - intended to be consumed with Yak Butter, Salt and a tiny bit of sugar.

I suppose high quality sea salt will be OK

what would be the type of sugar they use - would my Malaysian Jaggery be OK ?

but which kind of butter most closely approximates to Yak Butter

[Herb_Master]

Possibly I should look for the richest butter that I can find ??

http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?it ... ubcatid=38

Tibetans that were transplanted to Switzerland n the 1960s first used normal butter as a substitute when they couldn't get any yak butter, but when the cost of butter became prohibitively expensive they switched to margarine.♣

The milk is rich and contains double the protein and minerals of cow’s milk but it spoils in two hours, which explains why it is usually made into butter.

Yak milking takes some skill.

First catch your Yak

Should I allow the butter to age in the refrigerator (or out of it) to go a tiny bit rancid?

Yak butter stays preserved for a long time in leather bags. When sealed in airtight sheepskin bags, butter will remain edible for up to a year. But it doesn’t always seem that way. The sour smell of rancid yak butter, wrote Theroux "resembles the smell of an American family's refrigerator after a long midsummer power cut. It is the reek of old milk."

[Herb_Master]

Tibetans make incredibly detailed yak butter sculptures and friezes of flowers, landscapes, trees, temples, human figures animals and god and goddesses.

I am surprised Chip has not talked one of these Yak Farmer/Sculptors into setting up an Artisans page on TeaChat

[Kunkali]

Maybe a good authentic ghee?

[Chip]

Tibetans make incredibly detailed yak butter sculptures and friezes of flowers, landscapes, trees, temples, human figures animals and god and goddesses.

I am surprised Chip has not talked one of these Yak Farmer/Sculptors into setting up an Artisans page on TeaChat

OTTI 9 ...

[TwoPynts]

The ghee's I've had are fairly tasteless...I am not sure if that would be a good thing or bad thing in this case. Otherwise a rich butter would be my suggestion too. Raw sugar crystals (the brown ones) to sweeten and a little Himalayan sea salt seems appropriate.

[Herb_Master]

The ghee's I've had are fairly tasteless...I am not sure if that would be a good thing or bad thing in this case. Otherwise a rich butter would be my suggestion too. Raw sugar crystals (the brown ones) to sweeten and a little Himalayan sea salt seems appropriate.

I am not sure that tasteless is a bad thing there seem to be 2 schools of thought.

A) Which my gf in Malaysia saw on a documentary on Malaysian TV 2 weeks ago - and which I have seen corrobortaed on a number of websites.

The butter is only supposed to act as an insulating film on top of the tea, it keeps the tea hot, blow it to one side before sipping the tea.

B) There is something called a Chandong which is a large wooden tube with a plunger - translated as a 'Tibetan Butter Tea Churn' - the plunger helps the melting butter to be emulsified into the tea. This surely would be in direct contrast to the first practice