How to make tsampa

Tsampa is a traditional Tibetan food and a staple food of Tibetan herdsmen. It is the transliteration of Tibetan. When guests come to the homes of Tibetan compatriots, the hosts often take out fragrant milk tea and fried noodles for the guests. There are mainly two steps in making tsampa. The first is fried barley and the second is magic tsampa. Let's learn about the method of making tsampa.

How to make tsampa

The processing of tsampa is divided into two steps: one is frying highland barley, the other is grinding tsampa. Wash the highland barley with water and dry it before frying. Use a clay pot to fry highland barley flowers: first pour coarse sand into the pot and heat it until the bottom of the pot is almost red. Immediately pour an appropriate amount of highland barley into the pot, hold the handles and shake the pot. After a few minutes, smoke came out of the tank and there was a sound of barley popping. When the popping sound stops, the highland barley flowers are ready and the sand can be drained out using an iron sieve. Stir-fry barley flowers in an iron pan: Pour an appropriate amount of barley into the iron pan, gradually heat it, and constantly turn it over in the pan with a brush of shrub branches to ensure that the barley is heated evenly, until barley flowers burst out. Flat iron pans are used in Qamdo, Nyingchi and northern Tibetan pastoral areas, and sand is sometimes added, but no sand is added when frying large amounts of barley. Because the temperature in front of the stove is high, the person who controls the fire often sweats profusely. If making fine tsampa, the barley flowers have to be put into a leather bag and stepped on with feet, leaving only the barley flower core.

When grinding tsampa, water mills are mostly used, and the water mills are installed on canals or natural streams. The lower millstone is fixed, and the upper millstone is fixedly connected to the wooden water wheel shaft. The shaft extends downward through the hole in the center of the lower grinding disc, and a water wheel is installed at the lower end, and the shaft drives the upper grinding disc to rotate. There is inlet material on the upper grinding disc, and a fixed leather funnel filled with highland barley flowers is installed on the upper end of the feed inlet. Tie a horizontal beam at the lower end of the funnel, and install a short stick vertically at the end of the horizontal beam to contact the edge of the upper grinding disc. The rotation of the millstone vibrates the wooden stick, and the barley slowly flows into the millstone feed port, continuously producing tsampa. In the Chamdo area, a stick is inserted into the funnel with the lower end suspended at the feed port. When the grinding disc rotates, the funnel port also vibrates. The Tibetan water mill is a relatively effective device among the traditional grain processing tools on the plateau. It reflects the wisdom of the Tibetan people and is still widely used today.

Main Ingredients

Tsampa is made by mixing highland barley with clean fine yarn, frying it over fire, then sifting out the fine sand and grinding it into powder. The main components of tsampa are protein, which accounts for about 13.5%, fat for 2%, carbohydrates for 75%, and seventeen kinds of amino acids for about 14%; inorganic salts are rich in calcium, iron, zinc and other trace elements; it is also rich in vitamin B1.

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