Teh Tarik
Strong black tea and condensed milk, pulled between two vessels until it foams.
CC BY-SA 2.0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A glass mug of teh tarik, milky tea topped with a thick layer of foam from the pull
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Extraction
No extraction yield is shown. It needs a measured dissolved-solids figure from the finished cup, nothing on a bag of coffee supplies one, and estimating it from the method would be inventing the single number the calculation exists to establish.
Ingredients
160 ml water
6 g black tea
30 ml condensed milk
- 160 ml water
- 6 g black tea
- 30 ml condensed milk
Glass
Vessel
170 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 350 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
4 steps · 5mPour the 160 ml water at 100 °C over the 6 g black tea and steep for 5m.
Strain out the leaf into a metal cup or tin.
Stir in the 30 ml condensed milk.
Pour the tea back and forth between the cup and a second vessel held at arm's length, from a height, until a layer of froth sits on top.
The tea is poured back and forth between two vessels held well apart rather than stirred, which aerates it, cools it to drinking temperature fast, and mixes the condensed milk in fully; the froth on top is a sign the pull was done properly, not a garnish added afterwards.
Common pitfallTea brewed to an ordinary strength gets lost against the condensed milk once it is pulled; the leaf is dosed heavier here than for a plain cup specifically because the milk is going to compete with it.
Keeping and make-ahead
Brewed and pulled to order; the froth the pull raises collapses within minutes and cannot be made ahead.
About
Strong black tea and condensed milk poured between two vessels until it foams, a Malaysian street drink born from Indian Muslim immigrant stalls and now the country's declared national drink.
Teh tarik grew out of the Mamak community, Malaysians descended from Indian Muslim immigrants who settled the peninsula mostly during British colonial rule 1. Their drink stalls date back at least to the 1870s, when vendors served spiced milk tea at the gates of rubber plantations, and the pulling technique itself (pouring the tea back and forth between two vessels) is traced to South Indian street cooks working after 1850 2.
The drink's present form is a postwar adaptation rather than an unbroken recipe. After the Second World War, economic pressure pushed vendors toward tea dust, a cheaper, lower grade of leaf that brewed noticeably more bitter, and condensed milk was added specifically to cover that bitterness. This combination produced teh tarik as it is known today 2. The pull itself does double duty beyond showmanship: tea master Senthil Kumar describes it as needing both short and long motions to properly mix and aerate the drink, which also cools it fast enough to drink sooner than a cup left to sit 1.
Those same Mamak vendors went on to build the roadside eateries now known across Malaysia simply as mamak stalls, and teh tarik followed them into that wider role 1. It is now treated as Malaysia's national drink, made and drunk across the country's Malay, Chinese and Indian communities alike, and it was included in Malaysia's 2024 UNESCO intangible cultural heritage nomination 2.
- 1Teh tarik: Malaysia's iconic art of 'pulled tea'arabnews.com
- 2Teh tariken.wikipedia.org