Mongolian People's Life

Food Customs

Milk and meat are staple foods at all three of the daily meals Mongolians customarily eat.

Milk-based food products are calld "Zhaganyide" in Mongolian, meaning pure and food, or white food. Meat is mainly taken from ox and sheep, as well as goats and sometimes horses. Mongolian gazelle are also eaten during the hunting season.

There are more than 70 traditional cooking techniques for mutton, including roasting an entire sheep without the skin, stove-roasting a whole sheep with the skin, as well as Alashan roasted whole sheep, and Shoupa mutton, the most common technique, which refers to mutton eaten with the hands, rather than chopsticks.

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