Xinjiang Milk Tea

Xinjiang milk tea is made by boiling Fu brick (dark) tea in water, then blending in fresh cow's or mare's milk with salt—and sometimes butter or clotted cream—to a glossy brown drink that is savoury, mellow and altogether unlike the sweet milk tea of inland China, the everyday guest drink of Urumqi and the northern steppe peoples.

The marriage of tea and milk comes from northern nomadic life; Fu brick tea flowed into Xinjiang along the tea-horse routes to meet the steppe's fresh milk in a salty brew shared by Uyghur, Kazakh and Mongol peoples, a living taste of the Silk Road tea-horse trade.

Served by the bowl and brewed fresh, it accompanies nang, dried curds, parched millet or kebab, the standard pairing of Urumqi's morning tea and hospitality; copper pots of it stay warm in street teahouses and pastoral yurts alike.

Salty rather than sweet, the mellow blend of Fu brick tea with fresh milk, and the custom of drinking it with nang and kebab set Xinjiang milk tea apart.