Home page > Useful
information > 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 Kazaks in western
Mongolia add variety to their diet with horse
meat. The Mongolians are big tea drinkers and
the classic drink is salty milk tea. Men who refuse
to drink vodka are considered wimps, while herders
make their own unique home brew airag, which is
fermented horse's milk with an alcoholic content
of about 3%. Many Mongolians distill it further
to produce shimiin arkhi, which boosts the alcohol
content to around 12%.
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 a 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 yak's 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, camel, 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 favorites for celebrations. This
is when hot rocks are placed into the skin of
the animal, or an urn, followed by chunks of meat
and water. The neck of the animal is then sewn
up and the meat allowed to roast. Marmots are
also hunted in the summer months and their meat
is considered a delicacy.
The rift between countryside and city is so big
that food stores in Ulaanbaatar offer German jam,
butter from New Zealand, cheese from Russia, mustard
from Czech Republic, and juice from Poland (these
are just examples), but virtually no products
of Mongolian origin besides yogurt, bread and
sausage. Mongolia lacks the technical means to
produce and transport dairy products in winter;
with temperatures below -30 C (-22 F) milk and
cheese have to be heated rather than to be cooled!
As a consequence, relying on imported foodstuff
without access to local resources is an expensive
endeavor for the average city dweller stretching
the family budget to its limits.
Contact us at:
info@thisismongolia.com
