Pseudo Suutei Tsai: My Own Private Mongolia
Restorative. Sustaining. Toasty and slightly smoky. Rich yet light, like a cheese soup’s shadow. Browned butter and a hint of salt float delicately over the tea tannins, like a silk khadak scarf streaming in the breeze over an ovoo shrine’s collected stones of intent.
Am I making authentic suutei tsai the way they do in Mongolia? Probably not, even given the countless regional variations found in-country. I started with a few Mongolian-derived recipes I found online. They were a good start, leading me to massage the technique — lovingly and at length — to get the most out of industry-produced, store-bought ingredients (“Taste the Nothing! That’s how you know it’s safe!”) and urban kitchen equipment for the miniscule households and crammed-to-bursting schedules of my own locale.
Hence the “pseudo.”
After reading Brian Feldman’s article I don’t know if it’ll ever replace cheap iced tea. In the words of the immortal Utah Phillips, “It’s good, though.”
I became curious about Mongolian suutei tsai, and many other things Mongolian, while writing a novel-length story set in and near the thirteenth-century Mongol Empire. The dream was brought to me one night by Mister Sandman (who disappointingly looks nothing like a tall Neil Gaiman). He whacked me on the head with his sand-filled cosh (the obvious way to put someone to sleep with sand) and said “Here. Have a potentially interesting story. Quick, write it down before it fizzles off into the ozone.”
Although I’ve never mailed my spit to a genealogist (I’m waiting for an online DNA test where I just lick the screen), I’d be astonished to learn that the body I’m presently inhabiting is the least bit Mongolian. Why did the idea for this Mongolian story (now threatening to become a series) land on me? Who knows — perhaps my inner child, inner critic, and inner goddess have been joined by an inner Mongolian. Would that be an inner Inner Mongolian or an inner Outer Mongolian? A question for another day.
I’d blithely described Nerguitani (“No Name Girl”), my rookie-spy protagonista, as having “milk-tea skin,” imagining a soft light brown. This set my inner nitpicker (always peeping through the blinds like Mrs. Kravitz from Bewitched) to wondering exactly what color that stuff really was. The first description I found called for green tea, which gave me a bad moment. No Name Girl was already descended from Men with Blue Dots; a green complexion on top of that would make her way too conspicuous. It turns out, though, that the toasted millet dominates the color of finished suutei tsai; it is, in fact, a nice light brown. Whew. But now I was really curious about the tea, especially the part where most Westerners seem to hate it.
One online recipe begins “First, fly to Mongolia and wander with the nomads.” Nice work if you can get it. My own health and finances spent the last couple of years mutually assuring each other’s destruction, leaving me too sick to earn money, too broke to pay for treatment, and certainly too feeble for distant, rugged, famously challenging Mongolia. Nor could I order suutei tsai at a nearby restaurant: The only “Mongolian” restaurants near me are “Mongolian BBQ,” actually a Taiwanese invention from the 1950s (though someone has finally built one in Ulaanbaatar for all the visitors who keep asking for it and the locals who’ve been wondering WTF it is). Even though I’d never tried real, authentic suutei tsai, my first batch (from this recipe) seemed to match the various writers’ descriptions I’d encountered.
I liked the resulting flavor, which was almost like a stronger, creamy version of Japanese genmaicha. It satisfied my thirst, hunger, and severe energy deficit in a cultural environment that — bless its heart — actively reinforces dissatisfaction (while suggesting that the solution is to buy more stuff). The weather’s reasonable, I don’t hear gunfire, my herd of cats is thriving, and I just drank something comforting; what else do I need? However, the suutei-tsai-making process took over an hour of hovering over the stove. Not a bad winter meditation (read “excuse to stay warm”), but a bit much in a 90℉ (32 C) summer. What’s more, when (as I make myself say) I get well enough to go back to work, I’ll probably want to enjoy Pseudo Suutei Tsai a lot more often than I can scrounge an uninterrupted waking hour at a stove.
Here’s my latest recipe, for those who were wondering if there’d be one. More discussion follows.
Pseudo Suutei Tsai
Make-Ahead Concentrate (just add water and heat when ready to drink) The concentrate can be used immediately, or will keep refrigerated for 5–7 days.
Ingredients for two 8-12 oz. (240–350ml) servings to try:
- Butter, ½ Tbsp. (7 mL, ~1 pat)
Uncooked millet, 2 Tbsp. (16 g)
Tea leaves, finely crumbled, 1 ½ tsp. (3 g)
Salt, coarse kosher, one 3-finger pinch OR Salt, fine goyishe treyf, one 2-finger pinch
Sugar, ½ tsp. , loose (2 g)
Half-and-half, ½ cup (120 mL)
Ingredients for 12 8–12 oz. (240–350ml) servings to last an aficionado all week:
- Butter, 3 Tbsp. (28 mL)
Uncooked millet, 1 cup (136 g)
Tea leaves, finely crumbled, 2 Tbsp. (10 g)
Salt, coarse kosher, 1½ tsp. (4 g) OR Salt, fine goyishe treyf, 1 tsp. (4 g)
Sugar, 4 tsp. , loose (18 g)
Half-and-half, 1 quart (960 mL)
Tools:
- Saucepan with lid
Stirring spoon or ladle
Sealable drinking vessel with watertight lid, safe for hot contents
- In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and keep heating until browned and fragrant.
- Add millet, tea leaves, salt, and sugar. Stir to coat with butter. Sauté mixture until it darkens and a toasty aroma develops.
- Add half-and-half. Stirring and ladling, bring mixture to a moderate boil. Boil, stirring and ladling, for 3–5 minutes or until the liquid thins from melting of the milkfat.
- Remove stirring spoon. Cover saucepan with lid. Turn off heat but leave pan on cooling burner for 1–2 hours.
- Turn on medium heat. Remove saucepan lid. Bring mixture back to a boil for 1–2 minutes, then reduce heat to simmer.
- Simmer, stirring and ladling frequently, until mixture thickens and forms a coating on the stirring spoon. Turn off heat.
Making Tea from the Concentrate:
- Fill ⅛ to ¼ of drinking vessel with concentrate.
- Add 3–4x as much hot water >170℉ (77 C) as concentrate (OR add 3–4x as much lukewarm water, then microwave on High until hot).
- Attach watertight lid and shake drinking vessel briskly for 30–60 seconds to aerate and form a foam. If too hot to hold by hand, use pot-holder or towel to insulate.
- Let cool to a drinkable temperature — best above 104℉ (40 C)) — , remove the lid, and enjoy.
Critical Factors:
This is a very forgiving recipe; there are just a few things to watch out for.
- The millet should be thoroughly cooked and suffused with liquid (“juicy” and flavorful rather than dry and starchy). This is what takes the longest; with the resting method, you can at least do something else for 1–2 hours.
- The milkfat should melt to carry the tea, grain, butter, salt, and sugar flavors into the broth,
- All ingredients should cook long enough to produce a pleasant smell.
“Troubles” that Might Not Need Shooting:
In some other recipes, these things might worry you. Here, no big whoop.
- Thin skin forms on top of the liquid. Just break it up and stir it in; it’ll be like little shreds of toast-and-tea-flavored cream cheese, not unpleasant. “Milk Skins” have their own Mongolian recipe.
- Milk curdles: You end up with a thinner decoction and little curds mixed in with the millet. Some people are OK with it and some aren’t. It’s not my favorite, but it the milk isn’t spoiled or unsafe to drink unless it came pre-curdled out of the carton. Curds are just milk proteins that separate out of the liquid (becoming curdish separatists?) if there’s not enough milkfat to hold everything together. Spoilage can trigger curdling, but if a mixture has very little milkfat, so can normal cooking events such as rapid temperature change, salt, or the acids coming out of the tea leaves. I’ve never had a batch curdle using half-and-half as the recipe says. With whole milk you’ve at least got a shot. 2%, 1% or nonfat milk, though, may curdle at its boiling point, on contact with the tea or salt, or even (I can attest to this, after carefully slow heating and combining got me over the other curdle hurdles) when a room-temperature spoon is inserted in the heated mixture.
- The butter blackens: It will still taste fine. The texture might be a little less smooth than with browned butter, but in the finished drink it isn’t very noticeable.
- Slight charring of the millet and tea: If the whole pan catches on fire or something, throw it out (after the flames are extinguished, of course), but if there’s just a little bit of smoke, unless you absolutely hate any slightly-burnt flavor, douse it with the half-and-half and keep going.
- Unexpected, but not unpleasant, smells while cooking: My first batch came out with a faint aroma of meat. (???) Then I found out Mongolians sometimes add little pieces of meat, or meat-filled dumplings, to suutei tsai; I may try bacon bits one of these days. I’ve also gotten little whiffs of flowers and citrus sometimes. I suspect there are just some interactions between dairy from differently fed cows and different kinds of millet and tea. (Definitely ditch it if it smells bad, though; US farmers continuously battle off-flavors in milk, and you might have gotten a borderline batch).
- Ritual incorrectness: Stirring strictly clockwise, ladling in multiples of 9, and sprinkling an offering before starting to drink, as some Mongolians are said to do, turn out to be purely optional in this non-canonical recipe. I’ve made oodles of ritual dishes in my life, some nerve-wrackingly sensitive, so I always err on the side of caution at the beginning. This easy-going tea, though, seems perfectly happy to be treated profanely: microwaved, shaken up in Mason jars, etc. If it starts spilling or leaking a lot, you might want to flick a few drops onto some soil (a houseplant will do in a pinch) to satisfy any thirsty spirits lurking about… but you’ll also want to check for millet grains stuck to your shaker lid, creating little gaps in the seal. Just sayin’.
It’s possible that our ingredients have lost some or all of their original mojo by the time we rise at the end of rush hour and venture out to milk the supermarket. Even so, my experiments (carried on with the undiluted focus of a solitary-confinement prisoner teaching rats to Riverdance) revealed that each one brings its own nuances to the tea party…
Milk of mammalian kindness
All the Mongolian references I’ve seen so far start by heating at least some ingredients in water, then adding the milk. They’ve been doing it that way for centuries, so it probably works best with their ingredients, equipment, and way of life (I will not say “lifestyle.” That word should have died in 1978 and been buried at the crossroads with a stake through its heart). I started out doing the same, but eventually much preferred the results of cooking everything in the milk and adding the water last. Being able to make a portable “just-add-water” concentrate was just the gravy on the top. (No, I don’t know if anyone anywhere actually makes suutei tsai with gravy on top, and I’m a little afraid to inquire).
In fact, trying to derive a mix that could be assembled like mainstream American break-room tea and coffee —steeping the active ingredients in hot water, then adding unheated milk —smothered all the flavors like the flames of a drowned campfire and rendered the mouth-feel somewhat greasy. Hell no thank you.
Milkfat works most of the magic in this recipe. It prevents curdling and scorching. It gives the drinker that nourished, satisfied feeling. Perhaps most crucially, it absorbs the toasty, nutty millet flavor and herbal, malty or mildly astringent tea flavors and disperses them through the liquid decoction. It does all these things if:
- it’s sufficiently heated and
- it makes enough contact with the dry ingredients.
Note: As I write this, milkfat is believed to be a nutritional boon. By the time you read this, it may be a threat to all life in the universe again, as it was until recently. Or it may have been pronounced evil for a while and then magically become good again. Or perhaps nutritionism will have grown up and started acting like a real science instead of a religion that sells flowers in the airport. Anything’s possible.
Milkfat melts at 104℉ (40 C), but tea leaves don’t start to release flavor until 150–200℉ (65–95 C) depending on the type of tea, so you need to get the milk at least that hot. Even heat-thinned milk, however, has trouble reaching tea leaves that are inside a teabag or a tea strainer. Instead of flowing freely in and out as water does, it coats the outer surface and becomes a barrier. Bruising and crumbling the tea leaves (or using a pre-crumbled form such as matcha powder) and mixing them into the millet exposes a lot of surface area to the milk and extracts the flavor efficiently. The little specks end up in the cup, but they’re no more obtrusive than seasoning in soup.
Of the readily available supermarket milks, half-and-half consistently made the best Pseudo Suutei Tsai. Whole milk (cow or goat) was pretty good. Heavy cream was too intense by itself, but can be diluted 2–4x with whole milk as a substitute for half-and-half. 2% milk produced rather thin, disappointing results. Supermarket “buttermilk” (which is really cultured 1% milk, not a by-product of butter-making), curdled immediately… but did add a fresh, almost citrusy overtaste that I liked. I can get that flavor without the curdling if I do all the heating and mixing with half-and-half, and then splash in a little buttermilk or yogurt just before drinking or storing.
The Rubric of Tea Bricks
Traditionally, Mongolians used (and many still use) “brick tea,” aka “caravan tea.” These solid cakes of compressed tea leaves are easy to transport and store. If the leaves are packed tightly enough in dry, clean conditions, the outer layer might protect the inside from dampness and contamination. From the tea-seller’s perspective, bricking can cover up a multitude of sins, such as added stems and elderly or afflicted leaves, that would be readily detected in loose tea.
Back in the day, brick tea was the kind of cheap, rough stuff we’d now expect out of the few dust-covered tea bags in an auto mechanic’s waiting room. Brick tea was also widely used in the US in the 1800s, both by westward-bound settlers from Eastern states and by railroad workers arriving from even farther East.
Today, though, brick tea is quite expensive in the US. It’s either (1) pressed into intricate patterns and sold as souvenirs in historical-museum gift shops or (2) round, loaf-like cakes of Pu-erh, a prized connoisseur tea from China’s Yunnan Province. I don’t recommend either of these modern brick teas for Pseudo Suutei Tsai. The souvenirs are crafted to last a long time as decorations, and may not even be intended for consumption. At the other end of the spectrum, good Pu-erh is subtle, complex, and sensitive to every step of preparation. Used in Pseudo Suutei Tsai, it would be like a live string quartet performance at the Festival of Leafblowers; all the delicate dimensions utterly drowned by stronger flavors.
Mongolians still use brick tea today, but most of it comes from Georgia (country). I haven’t been able to source any of that so far. However, true to the original spirit of suutei tsai, Pseudo Suutei Tsai works just fine with today’s affordable, widely available teas. So far, my favorite is plain green tea or matcha powder (the health-food-aisle version, not the exalted ceremonial stuff). Low-grade pu-erh is also pretty good, lending a smooth flavor that hints vaguely at dark chocolate. Oolong and black tea also work, although I found I had to use a reduced amount of Royal Elixir black if I wanted to taste anything else. With herb mixtures, I recommend making a small test batch first; green jasmine tea, for instance, gave me an almost rubbery undertaste I didn’t care for.
Still dubious about eating the tea-leaf crumbles? If you’ve ever had a matcha booster in your smoothie or participated in a Japanese tea ceremony, you’ve already eaten tea leaves! They’re an herb. The Thais and Burmese put handfuls of them in salads. Really, really good salads.
Millet: A Bird’s Eye View
Millet in the US is mostly sold as birdseed and small-pet food. They’re those really tiny seeds that always seem to be the last things left in the dish. The online consensus seems to be that “store-bought birdseed is not required by law to meet human-food standards.” You’ve been warned.
Health-food stores have started to carry millet as a “new” gluten-free grain. In an Indian grocery store (where it wasn’t priced like tiny lumps of gold) I found “millet” and “hulled millet” right next to each other. The “hulled millet” definitely had more of a processed look, so at first I thought the other millet was unhulled — but according to some articles, millet must be hulled for human consumption, so maybe it’s all hulled and then just polished to different degrees.
The most common type of millet in the stores is proso millet. Every grain in the bag is a uniform yellowish beige. When cooked, it tends to break apart and thicken the liquid, like rolled oats. Other types include pearl, Kodo, barnyard, and little millet. The grains are varied shades of brown like the stitches in tweed material. The “tweed” grains take a little longer to cook than the “beige” grains. They also hold together and add more texture and nutty flavor, somewhat like steel-cut oats. Used by themselves, though, they get a little heavy and dense, akin to some of the early 1970’s wheat-germ granolas. Therefore I like to use a 50–50 mix of proso and Kodo millet for Pseudo Suutei Tsai.
Toasting the millet brings out a lot of flavors, and is also said to make the nutrients more bioavailable. Depending on your tastes, you can toast it until it’s a shade or two more golden, or douse it with the half-and-half just before it chars as I do… or anything in between.
With a Grain of Salt
The salt appears to be the big deal-breaker for people accustomed to sweetened or plain tea. Just a little bit of salt, though, punches up the tea and millet flavors without making itself obtrusive.
Salt seems to collect in the millet as it cooks, making the millet tasty but leaving the liquid decoction a little bland. If that happens, I add a little more salt at the very end, when the millet has stopped absorbing. I’ve heard that the trace minerals in “exotic” salts aren’t supposed to affect flavor, but without a proper explanation, I still like Himalayan Pink salt best in Pseudo Suutei Tsai.
I sometimes wonder: Did the Mongolians add salt to their tea from the beginning, or was it already in the water in some places? Desert water sources are often naturally salty. In the southwestern US, prospectors got so used to the taste that they would carry packets of the dry alkaline minerals when they traveled, sprinkling it in the drinking water at their destinations to “make it taste right.” The Gobi desert also has salty water, Did Mongolian nomads who spent part of their time in the Gobi crave Gobi-flavored tea elsewhere? Or did they find that a little salt in the tea staved off electrolyte loss?
Falling on the Buttered Side
Some suutei tsai recipes don’t include butter. I found that just a little dab makes a delicious difference. Browning or even blackening a little butter in the pan amps up the flavor and banishes any hint of fridge taste. It gets absorbed in the millet and tea leaves, so no butter puddles on the surface.
Gimme Some Sugar… Or Not
I use only a light dusting of sugar or other sweeteners to boost the main flavors (as others do with spaghetti sauce and French fries), but you can use more, caramelize it with the millet as some recipes do, and I won’t tell anyone. So far I like light brown sugar best.
Taking It On the Road
The concentrate produced by the recipe above is fairly “wet.” If you’d rather have a thicker paste that’s easier to carry around in a plastic bag or similar, you can simmer the concentrate on very low heat until you have a thick, viscous porridge. Keep the heat low, though; even medium-low heat can drive off some of the flavors along with the extra liquid.
What’s Next?
My work on Pseudo Suutei Tsai has undoubtedly paid off for me. I have a go-to drink that wakes me up when half a hot-tub full of cold-brew coffee won’t, and it doesn’t tie my shoulders in knots. Gives me the energy to write when I’m not tending my herd of cats. Even better, it gets me strange looks from family and friends.
I’ve read that the “real” Mongolian barbecue is something called bodog (nothing to do with the gambling site), meat cooked in the animal’s skin. It’s been speculated that it might have been road food for warriors who wanted to avoid carrying cookpots, but personally I doubt it. I suspect it was more of a special-occasion dish, similar to a luau, because even practiced bodog cooks take all day and half the night to prep and cook one compact, fits-in-a-car-trunk goat.
And no wonder: To keep all the juices trapped inside, they only make a single hole in the skin and have to scoop all of the — — er, contents, including the bones — — out through that hole without accidentally piercing the skin anywhere else (imagine having to do that to the frog you dissected in high school!). That takes about five hours all by itself. Then they select which cuts of meat to eat that night, chop it up with any vegetables and seasonings they want to use, and stuff it back in along with hot rocks. But the hot rocks alone aren’t enough, especially on one of those nippy -60℉ (-40C) evenings, so they simultaneously cook it from the outside with a blowtorch. The Khans’ warriors didn’t have blowtorches, by all accounts, although I bet they really would have liked them.
Besides goats and sheep, Tarvaga marmots (which look like the gopher from the movie Caddyshack) were traditionally bodog barbecued. Probably not so much now that they’re endangered, right? But they’re small and probably only took a few hours to prep and cook.
Dang it! Excuse me. Those pesky squirrels are after my sweetheart’s bonsai in the backyard again.
Hmm… how big is our microwave?
