Mongolian food

I have had many "ethnic" foods in the course of my life. Travels within Asia, an abundance of international dinners while visiting churches, and the gracious generosity of many hosts from various countries who have provided meals while I was traveling. Generally, I enjoy the new tastes of foreign foods.

One of my favorite restaurants to eat at when I lived in the United States was Mongolian barbecues. If you have never eaten at one, such a restaurant provides raw meat, fresh vegetables, spices, and a variety of sauces. The customer loads up a bowl with his choice of meats, vegetables, spices, and sauce and takes the bowl to the cook. The cook pours out the contents of the bowl on a hot grill and cooks it all. I could not wait to get to Mongolia and discover the source of these restaurants. I was sorely disappointed. Mongolian barbecues in the U.S. are nothing like Mongolian food. There are few vegetables - mainly limited to potatoes, carrots, and onions - almost no spices, and certainly no sauces. The result is very bland food except for two flavorings that seem to permeate most of Mongolian cuisine.

If you like to drink buttermilk and eat cold fat than Mongolia is the place for you. Because of the lack of refrigeration in previous generations many of the milk products that are enjoyed in Mongolia are soured or fermented. Yogurts, dried curds, even the milk itself can have a slightly sour taste. We have come to call it: the Mongolian taste.

Mongolians also like to eat fat. Buuz is the Mongolian delicacy. It is a dumpling made with a meatball surrounded by dough. If Mongolians want to make it extra-special they include a chunk of fat in with the meatball. Once steamed, the dumpling contains a high amount of grease in it. One danger of eating buuz for foreigners is that one will get grease on one's shirt; take a bite of buuz, and the grease will come pouring out. Mongolians avoid this by taking a bite and sucking out the grease.

There is a unique Mongolian flavor that combines both of these tastes: shar tos or "yellow oil." As best as I can tell shar tos is rancid grease. It has the distinctive odor of rancid oil and comes in large blocks that initially might pass for huge slabs of margarine. This oily grease is added to all kinds of dishes to increase the flavor and is usually a taste Mongolians savor. I once visited a home and was welcomed with a steaming bowl of hot rice with raisins. Growing up rice and raisins was a breakfast that I enjoyed and without smelling the dish I raised a large spoonful to my mouth. No sooner had I tasted it than I realized that it was rice and raisins but also contained a third ingredient: shar tos. Needless to say, it reduced my enjoyment of the meal although I took seconds to please my host.