Tibetan Yogurt 酸奶

How it is made

Tibet Business Daily (西藏商报) followed two Lhasa makers in 2015. At a yogurt shop on the west side of the Potala Palace, staff boil fresh milk brought in from the herding areas before closing time, stir in some finished yogurt as a starter, pour it into pails and wrap them in several layers of quilts overnight; next morning it is ladled straight into bowls.

A street seller on Beijing Middle Road (北京中路) contracts her own milk animals and collects fresh yak milk every morning. She sets it in the Lhasa winter sun under a parasol, because the yogurt needs the warmth but must not be in direct sunlight, and serves it in bamboo tubes with sugar stirred through.

Flavour and texture

With no additives, the shop yogurt is too sour for many visitors from elsewhere in China, who pile on white sugar; the sugar sits undissolved in the thick yogurt and crunches between the teeth. The bamboo-tube version, with its sugar fully mixed in, tastes sweet and sour and is easier for newcomers. Tibet Business Daily adds that the best yak yogurt in Tibet is said to come from the pastures of Damxung (当雄).

How it is eaten

Yak yogurt is an indispensable food and offering in Tibet. During Shoton, Lhasa people go to Drepung Monastery (哲蚌寺) for the Buddha unveiling, watch Tibetan opera at the Norbulingka (罗布林卡) and eat yogurt. China News Service notes that Lhasa's Shoton festival was added to China's national intangible-heritage list in 2006.

Lhasa Daily describes newer ways of serving it: mixed with droma (人参果), whose red stands out against the white; as a Tibetan fruit salad; with highland barley as an after-dinner sweet; and made into yogurt cake.