What is Kalmyk tea, what kind of tea leaves are they used? Types of additional ingredients, calorie content and composition. The benefits and harms of the drink, preparation methods. Interesting facts about an unusual product.
Kalmyk tea is a dish of the national cuisine of the peoples of Kalmykia, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan, who until the twentieth century prefer a nomadic way of life. It is still not entirely clear whether it is a drink or a soup. It is made from pressed green long tea with the addition of salt, milk, animal fats. Medicinal herbs and spices are often used as additional ingredients. Other names: Mongolian, Kyrgyz, Jomba or Jamba. The color of the liquid is rich dark, brown or milky brown, the taste without spices is tart, salty. After swallowing, the sensation of a film on the oral mucosa remains. Despite the fact that there are many recipes for making Kalmyk tea, the drink did not gain much popularity due to its specific consistency.
How is Kalmyk tea made?
The main ingredient of the dish is tea leaves. It is made to order using a mixture of lower and upper tea leaves, side shoots and buds. The dense structure is achieved by the abundant release of resins during pressing.
Note! The difference between tiled Kalmyk tea from ordinary tea is the absence of fermentation of the raw material.
To save a little, they often purchase friable, slightly dried raw materials for self-pressing. In this case, the salt is added at the stage of making the tiles.
Some small businesses have improved the technology and soak the leaves in milk, then dry them in ovens with the oven door open, or under the sun. Such pressed Kalmyk tea is much more convenient to brew - you can take it with you on trips and enjoy the taste similar to the original without adding additional ingredients.
Important! It is impossible to obtain a completely real product only by brewing. The drink needs to be boiled.
Composition and calorie content of Kalmyk tea
The nutritional value of a product depends on the amount of milk, animal fats and other components.
The calorie content of classic Kalmyk tea is 429 kcal, of which:
- Proteins - 2 g;
- Fat - 33 g;
- Carbohydrates - 31 g.
The amount of dietary fiber and ash depends on the quality of the feedstock.
Kalmyk tea contains:
- Caffeine - stimulates the work of the brain, heart muscle, but inhibits the activity of the vagus nerve.
- Tannin - gives a tart taste and has a calming effect.
- Catechins are natural immunomodulators with antimicrobial activity.
- Phenolic compounds - stimulate appetite, irritate the mucous membrane of the digestive tract, stimulate the secretion of food enzymes.
- Potassium - stabilizes the functions of the kidneys, liver, cardiovascular system, normalizes the heart rate.
- Fluorine - improves immunity and removes antioxidants and heavy metal salts from the body.
- Iodine - accelerates metabolic processes, "is responsible" for the function of the thyroid gland, accelerates the development of nerve fiber cells.
- Manganese - stimulates the production of synovial fluid, improves joint function, protects the liver from the accumulation of fat cells.
- Sodium - participates in vital processes and normalizes the water-electrolyte balance.
- Vitamin K - the main role of the substance is to increase the function of blood clotting.
- Ascorbic acid - stimulates the synthesis of hormones and the elimination of toxins.
- Nicotinic acid - accelerates metabolic processes and improves cerebral and peripheral circulation.
- Complex of B vitamins - stabilizes the central nervous system.
When making Kalmyk tea, brewing, coming into contact with milk and other ingredients, creates easily digestible complexes of useful substances, which has a beneficial effect on the body. Thanks to the drink, you can quench your hunger and thirst, and restore strength after serious illnesses. However, the taste and action of the product is so specific that not everyone can improve their health in this way.
Useful properties of Kalmyk tea
With the help of a healing drink of a complex composition, shamans cured all diseases. They believed that tea promotes longevity. The recipe for a rejuvenating complex of that time: for a week to refuse all types of food, and in the morning to drink only a large bowl of tea and think about the eternal.
The use of the product does not guarantee eternal life, but the benefits of Kalmyk tea have been officially proven:
- Strengthens the immune system, has an antimicrobial effect, inhibits viral activity.
- Accelerates recovery after serious illness, improves memory function, normalizes the central nervous system. Used to eliminate anemia.
- Prevents the development of diabetes, lowers blood sugar levels.
- Stabilizes blood pressure, strengthens blood vessels and tones the walls.
- Improves reaction, speeds up memorization.
- Reduces gas formation. It has an antioxidant effect, helps to cleanse the liver of toxins, and the intestines from toxins and fecal stones.
- Quickly warms up after hypothermia and helps to restore the water-electrolyte balance in the heat, restores the loss of salts.
Despite the high calorie content, Kalmyk milk tea is recommended to be included in the diet for weight loss. The acceleration of metabolic processes neutralizes the nutritional value of the dish. The feeling of hunger is blocked, and one meal is enough for several hours.
The drink helps nursing mothers restore lactation, and pregnant women - eliminate intoxication. The condition for treatment is: Kalmyk tea should be a familiar product. It is unacceptable to introduce this dish into the diet for the first time in such cases.
Contraindications and harm of Kalmyk tea
The medicinal effect of the drink has been tested by time. But in unfamiliar people, it can provoke negative manifestations: nausea, indigestion, epigastric pain and hepatic colic.
The harm of Kalmyk tea can occur with abuse, with allergies to ingredients - milk, herbs, green or black tea, if the recipe is not followed.
Negative effects: urolithiasis and cholelithiasis, impaired liver function, renal failure, development of gastroenterocolitis. If these diseases already exist, then you should refuse to get acquainted with the new dish.
It is not necessary to give a drink to a child for the first time before the age of 6. However, the fatty salty "soup" is unlikely to please the kid.
How to brew Kalmyk tea?
There are many recipes for the dish, but, regardless of the type of brewing and the method of preparation, there are certain recommendations that it is advisable to follow.
Before brewing Kalmyk tea, you need to take care of suitable dishes. The liquid will have to be boiled for a long time, so a teapot made of heat-resistant plastic or glass will not work.
Turn off the drink only when the contents of the saucepan have been boiled down 2 times. To speed up the process, use a pot or vat with wide edges.
They are immediately poured into bowls and drunk hot. If this condition is not observed, the liquid will harden, thicken, and a greasy film will appear on the surface. It is inconvenient to treat yourself from cups - you can get burned.
Milk is used only fatty, homemade, can be replaced with cream. If you only have a pasteurized product at hand, be sure to add butter.
Spices can be added to your own taste, experimenting with the amount of salt or herbs.
Tea tiles must be stored in a packaged form so that they do not lose their pronounced aroma. It is impossible to get a strong drink from "windy" tea.
How to make Kalmyk tea:
- A simple express recipe … A bar for 10 g of green tea, preferably unfermented, is poured with cold water, 250 ml, and brought to a boil. Cook for at least 10 minutes, pour in milk - the same amount as there was water in the original volume, heat to bubbles, add spices to taste - cinnamon, pepper mixture, grated nutmeg, bay leaf, thyme. Boil for 10-15 minutes, stir constantly so as not to burn, remove from heat. Add 1 tsp. butter. Allow to stand under the lid for at least half an hour.
- In Tatar … Break off a piece of tile and pound. The calculation for a portion is 1 tsp. tea leaves, 100 ml of water, 100 ml of fat milk. Pour the tea leaves with a mixture of liquids at the same time and boil in an open cast-iron saucepan, without closing the lid, until the contents have boiled down by 1/3. Pour in salt, boil for another 5-10 minutes, add butter, preferably ghee, before turning it off.
- Kalmyk … The proportions of tea and liquid are 10 g of tea leaves, 100 ml of water and 200 ml of milk. Pour the crushed compact with cold water, bring to a boil, pour in milk and add salt, favorite herbs and spices - peppercorns, and cinnamon and cloves with chopsticks. Cook for at least 30 minutes, until the contents boil away, add a little ghee or lamb fat. When the volume decreases by 1/3, everything is filtered and poured into bowls. Before serving, add a piece of butter to each.
- Jomba classic … A tile weighing 250 g is pounded, filled with 3 liters of cold water. Cook for 20 minutes, removing large pop-up stems and cuttings. Then pour in the thick cream, already warmed up almost to a boil. Bring to a boil and leave for 7 minutes. Condiments are common, be sure to insist.
- Hursitz … An exception is made for this type of drink - they do not take tiles, but brick brewing, for the facing side of which a high-grade fermented baikhov variety was used. A mixture of wheat and rye flour is fried in melted lard until a rich golden color. They are brewed according to any of the technologies already described, but at the boiling stage, bay leaves and nutmeg are necessarily lowered. Flour is introduced 10 minutes before turning off. Be sure to strain the drink.
The most interesting Kalmyk tea recipe in Adyghe … First, horse sorrel is boiled: the grass is poured, after washing with cold water, kneaded to make the juice easier to stand out, boil over low heat for at least an hour. It is necessary to calculate the amount of liquid so that it is enough until the end of the process. The broth is decanted and used to make tea. An additional ingredient is dried cilantro. Instead of sorrel, you can use willow tea or oregano. In herbal versions, cream is added to 1/3 of the decoction volume.
Interesting facts about Kalmyk tea
In modern recipes, butter is used, but the Kalmyks added mutton fat. The ancient Mongols could not imagine a tea soup without fried ram bone marrow and pieces of fat tail. Adygs, in order to prevent the development of scurvy, in addition to horse sorrel, poured steppe grass, which was called lebeschai. Historians still cannot agree that this is oregano, lovage, or a mixture of herbs.
The only thing that remains unchanged in the Kalmyk tea recipe is the infusion of unfermented green tea pressed into tiles. Once this was explained by taste, now - by the ability to prepare a strong drink. True, there are already culinary specialists who insist loose loose green tea.
The original dish was simmered overnight. According to the ancient tradition, they stirred (samrili) up and down clockwise - exactly 189 times. This movement - from left to right - simulates the solar movement across the sky during the day.
The energetic properties of the resulting infusion were so high that after 1 cup of a modern person, the heart can stop and volvulus appears.
The first to try the medicinal properties of tea was a Tibetan monk. Feeling unwell, he could not cope with it on his own, with the help of prayers and rituals. Tszonkhava turned to Kalmyk shamans. On the seventh day of therapy, the disease completely receded.
Once upon a time, Russian ambassadors refused to drink a strange drink during traditional tea drinking, for which they paid with their lives. The meal of the Mongol princes consisted of lamb, which was washed down with fatty tea. The Rusichi refused to try a kind of hot spicy-salty product and were content with cold water. (They didn’t know that if they washed down fatty fibrous meat with spring water, intestinal obstruction could develop.) A few hours later, they developed severe colic, and half of the delegates died in terrible agony. They decided that they had been injected with poison, which exacerbated an already difficult relationship.
Tea ceremonies are still held today. They end not so tragically, since those wishing to taste a drink with specific properties imagine in advance what they will drink. In addition, even if the main dish is fatty lamb, it must be accompanied by a side dish of carbohydrates. Tea is poured into ceramic bowls, and flat dishes with spices are placed on the table for everyone to fill the drink according to their own taste, and a pot of honey.
How to brew Kalmyk tea - watch the video:
If you want to enjoy a real national dish, you should come to Kalmykia in May. Every third Saturday, a Kalmyk tea festival is held, and you can try several options at once, brewed according to original recipes.
