🍽️ Tsampa

Roasted highland barley flour mixed with butter tea, a Tibetan staple.

Tsampa is the traditional staple of Tibetans, made by roasting highland barley and grinding it into fine flour. To eat, the flour is poured into a bowl with butter tea, a little dried milk curd or sugar, and kneaded by hand into a ball. It carries a strong roasted-barley aroma; coarse in texture yet increasingly nutty as you chew, and deeply filling. In Lhasa and beyond, Tibetans eat tsampa daily, portable and needing no cooking, it is the staple of herders on the move. The kneading pairs with the richness of butter tea; a bite of tsampa with a sip of tea makes the plainest, most substantial Tibetan meal.