My Adventures in Mongolia: Traditional Mongolian Feast

On our last full day in Mongolia, the Police Chief treated us to a full day of true Mongolian hospitality. We stopped at a market that had meat on the lower floor and a food market above. The sight and smell of all this meat is truly indescribable. And, the pictures don't quite capture all that my senses were taking in.

You can choose a full sheep or just parts of it that are already somewhat butchered.

When you decide on the meat you want, they take it off the rack and place it on a scale for you to see the weight and price. There were rows and rows of meat to choose from. We got our meat and veggies for our traditional Mongolian dinner here.

After we left the market I saw groups of people picking their sheep out of a herd to be slaughtered. I'm not sure which scenario is more unsettling - meat market or slaughtering a sheep yourself.

After the market we went to the ger of a wonderful nomadic family that lives in the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park. There we watched as they prepared a traditional meal for us. The meat was cut and torched to kill any bacteria. Then it was layered in a big pot with potato, carrot and turnip. Hot rocks were placed in the pot strategically to help cook the meal. They warmed the rocks first by placing them in a hot fire built from yak dung before putting them in the pot of food. The Police Chief blew on each rock before placing it in the pot.

Their ger

Cutting the meat

Preparing the torch

Torching the meat to sanitize it

Still torching....

I was silently praying that they would torch it plenty so we would not get sick.

Pugay, one of our interpreters, preparing the veggies

They refused to allow us to help. They wanted us to enjoy and watch.

Eagles are everywhere!

This is the sequence of layering the rocks in with the meal... Pick a rock from the dung fire, blow on it to get the dung ash off, and place it in with the meal.

Then they took the pot into the ger where the wind wasn't blowing to allow it to cook for a couple hours.

As they were taking the food from the pot, they handed each of us a hot rock. We tossed the rock back and forth between our hands and focused on places in our body that needed healing. The rocks are believed to heal if you place it on the area in need.

Police Chief

When the food was ready, they pulled out a big tray to place all the food on and told us to eat! There were no plates or utensils. Everything was just placed on the one tray. I tried to clean off all the meat from the bones but they teased us saying that we left too much on the bones. They tell their children that the bones must be clean. They showed us what they meant by clean bones and truly, I have never seen such clean bones before in my life!