Mongolian Food

An old Mongolian saying goes something like “Breakfast – keep for yourself, Lunch – share with your friends, Dinner – give to your enemies”. The biggest and most important meals for Mongolians are breakfast and lunch, which will usually consist of boiled mutton with lots of fat and flour and maybe some dairy products or rice. The Mongolians are big tea drinkers and the classic drink is salty milk tea. Mans drink airag, which is fermented horse’s milk with an alcoholic content of about 3%.

The main substance of the Mongolian diet is meat and milk products. Anything green or leafy is considered goat’s food. Although a diet with lots of mutton fat, fermented milk and salty milk tea is not popular dieters choice it has provided much sustenance, energy and nutrition for the nomad for centuries. There is not a lot of variation in the diet of the Mongolians but it is amazing the number and variety of meals that they can produce with such limited ingredients.

Milk is taken from yaks, cows sheep, goat and camels. Try to the yaks cream -   it is really to die for. The woman’s work is the milking. Sheep and goats are harnessed together, shoulder to shoulder, and milked early morning and at dusk. Throughout the summer mare’s are milked every two hours to make the mare’s milk, ‘airag’. Milk not fermented is used to make the salty tea. In addition to cream, milk and yoghurt, a variety of cheeses and curds make up what is known as the white foods. Appropriately, white is considered to be the color of luck by the nomadic peoples.

Meat is eaten from sheep, cow, goat, yak and sometimes horse. Although Buddhists, Mongolians would not survive without being meat eaters. Every part of the animal is used either eaten or used for clothes or coverings. Meat is usually cured and dried to last throughout the winter and spring. Herdsmen don’t like slaughtering animals during these seasons when they are lean. Horhog or Boodog are favourites for celebrations. This is when hot rocks are...