Salty Milk Tea 奶茶
Salty Milk Tea is featured among the local specialties of Inner Mongolia.
Salty Milk Tea (奶茶) is Mongolian milk tea: green brick tea (青砖茶) boiled and mixed with fresh milk and salt. Balajinima (巴拉吉尼玛), a herder who grew up on the grassland of Hulunbuir (呼伦贝尔), told China News Service in 2022 that every one of his days begins with milk tea boiled by his mother, and that he drinks it at meals, when thirsty and when tired.
How it is made
The same China News Service feature follows the method at a milk-tea house in Hohhot (呼和浩特). The tea is green brick tea made from Hubei (湖北) old green tea, a dark tea that brews a clear red-yellow liquor. The brick tea is steeped and boiled, the liquor is ladled up and poured back 81 times to draw out its aroma, and the clear liquor is then decanted. Butter is melted in a hot pot and toasted millet (炒米) is stir-fried in it; tea liquor, fresh milk and salt go in by proportion, cream is stirred through, and milk skin, milk curd, dried meat and fried dough strips go in last.
How it is eaten
Traditional Mongolian milk tea is reckoned by the pot, not by the cup or the bowl. In a Mongol home, the leftover tea from the morning is kept warm over a low flame so the family can pour it at any time, and a guest is first offered milk tea, filled to the brim as a sign of respect.
In Hulunbuir, Hulunbuir Daily describes Russian families in Erguna (额尔古纳) keeping lieba bread (列巴) on the table to eat with milk tea brewed by the mother of the house, or with Russian black tea. At a Zhalainuoer District (扎赉诺尔区) winter showcase held beside the Yimin River (伊敏河) in Hailar District (海拉尔区) on 25 January 2026, steaming milk tea was served beside northern pike ball soup (狗鱼丸子汤).
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.