Pot-Cooked Tea 锅茶

Pot-Cooked Tea (锅茶) is Mongolian milk tea that is brewed first and then cooked on in the pot with dried meat, dairy foods and roasted millet, so that it is eaten as much as drunk. In Hinggan League (兴安盟), Inner Mongolia, it was poured from copper pots at a 2025 dairy tasting, and it appears on the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's list of foods for a rural route through Jalaid Banner (扎赉特旗).

How it is made

The base is milk tea. A manager of the Gerile Ama (格日勒阿妈) milk-tea house chain in Hohhot, quoted by Wuhai Daily (乌海日报), says traditional milk tea goes through steeping, boiling, ladling, settling, blending and heating, and is usually boiled from green brick tea (青砖茶) with milk and sour milk skin. For pot tea, the milk tea is made first; air-dried meat, milk skin, milk tofu and roasted millet (炒米) are then added to the pot, which keeps cooking while people eat. Inner Mongolia News Network (内蒙古新闻网) lists cheese among the additions as well.

How it is eaten

Inner Mongolia News Network suggests eating pot tea with Mongolian guozi (果子), a fried dough made from yoghurt, eggs and a little sugar that is left to rise for half an hour before frying. At a dairy tasting held in Hinggan League in May 2025, China News Service (中国新闻网) reported staff in ethnic dress pouring steaming pot tea from copper pots into bowls, with golden milk skin spreading out in the tea.

Where it comes from

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Jalaid Banner route lists Mongolian pot tea among the ethnic dishes to try, with whole roast lamb, hand-held mutton, milk tea and milk tofu. In Horqin Right Front Banner (科右前旗), China Food Safety News (中国食品安全报) reported in 2025 that a deputy head of the banner's market regulation bureau named a packing and assembly line for Mongolian pot tea as a next step, one that would buy milk from nearby herders first.