The Joys of a Paleo Tibetan Tea Latte

I will admit, when I heard about Po Cha, otherwise known as Tibetan butter tea, I thought it sounded disgusting. I wouldn't even try to make it. Then, I realized that I had a quite severe dairy intolerance, and I put it from my mind as something I would never get to try.

Traditional Po Cha is made with a dark Puerh or other dark tea, yak milk, yak butter, and salt. The tea is brewed super strong and then churned with the salt, milk, and butter. I have heard people who try it for the first time say it is disgusting. I was not interested in trying it after I looked up reviews online. (This was before I got my Breville electric heater/frother combo).

I was moseying along when a good friend of mine took me to a coffee shop in the next small town over. This place was the best coffee shop I have ever been to. The name is Proper Grounds, and they make fabulous tea lattes.

There was an item on the menu called Paleo Coffee. Paleo Coffee is coconut oil, butter, coffee and coconut or nut milk pulsed in a blender. Never soy milk of course, because soy is something you stay away from as if it is radioactive. (Soy is EVIL!) I had a stroke of genius and asked the barista to make me something similar, except with Puerh tea and salt instead of coffee. (I don't recommend drinking coffee if you have any immune or autoimmune diseases-more on that later.)

I tried it and absolutely loved it! At that point, my competitiveness woke up, and I vowed that no coffee shop would make a tea latte that I couldn't make better at home. So I figured out how to make it better at home. Here is my recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Camel's Breath Toucha Puerh (or something similar) Bought from The Pheonix Collection.

Silk brand cashew milk (cashews are one of the best dairy substitutes)

1 Tbs ghee

1/8th tsp raw pink Himalayan salt (Revolution brand, available at Vitamin Cottage)

Instructions:

Fill half your cup or mug with filtered or spring water. Boil the water in a kettle. (NEVER in the microwave.) Put the Puerh in a French press and add the water when it reaches boiling. Brew the tea in the French press for 20 minutes. When the timer goes off, add half a mug of cashew milk and the Tablespoon of ghee to your milk frother/heater. Don't pour the tea out of the French press until the frother has run through it's cycle. When the frother is done, pour the puerh into to mug, than add the buttery cashew milk to the mug. The last and most finicky step is to add the salt. I recommend just enough salt to accent the flavor of the tea and buttermilk. It's a similar idea to a salted chocolate bar. You want to be able to taste the salt, but it should accent the other flavors without overwhelming them. I would recommend a salt shaker to prevent adding too much salt by accident. So there you have it! This tea latte has become my favorite morning drink, especially on a cold day. I never would have guessed that I would love a savory, rich tea latte as opposed to a sweet one, but now I am totally addicted! The flavor is very different from our American taste for sweet, but if you like trying new flavors and aren't intimidated by something different, y'all will probably love it! Until next time!

Update:

I no longer use the Silk brand cashew milk to make my tea lattes. I began to react negatively to it, having digestive difficulty whenever I used it. I than decided to switch to a much healthier, Paleo alternative. I use Natural Value Organic Coconut Milk in the can. I buy it at Alfalfa's 3 cases at a time with a 10% discount per case. When I go into the store to pick up my 3-case special order I do so with my mother on Tuesday so that I can use her Tuesday Senior Discount of 10% on the whole order. It is far cheaper to do it that way than buying it from Amazon.

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