What to eat in Mongolia, honestly

Mongolian food is the cooking of a nomadic herding people in a climate with a short growing season and no sea. That means meat and milk, in a great many forms, with flour and a small number of root vegetables. It is not varied, it is not spiced in the way the rest of Asia is spiced, and after ten days of camp cooking it repeats.

It is also genuinely interesting once you know what you are looking at, and there are three or four things here that are properly good. Here is the honest version.

The core repertoire

Buuz. Steamed dumplings, usually mutton with onion and garlic, sometimes beef. The national dish in the way that matters: made in enormous quantities for Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year, and eaten year round. Good buuz are excellent. The trick is the juice inside, which is why you bite a small hole first rather than putting the whole thing in your mouth.

Khuushuur. The fried version, flatter and larger, a disc of dough filled with the same meat and fried until blistered. These are what you eat at Naadam, from stalls at the edge of the wrestling, and they are considerably better there than anywhere else.

Tsuivan. Hand-cut steamed noodles fried with mutton, onion, carrot and potato. This is the everyday dish of the countryside and it is what you will be given most often at camps. A good tsuivan is genuinely satisfying. An indifferent one is the reason people complain about Mongolian food.

Guriltai shul. Mutton and noodle soup, with the same vegetables. The other everyday dish, and the one that is welcome after a cold day in a vehicle.

Boodog and khorkhog. The set pieces, and the ones worth arranging. Khorkhog is mutton cooked in a sealed metal container with fire-heated river stones, water and vegetables, and served with the stones, which you pass from hand to hand because they are believed to be good for you and because they are extremely hot. Boodog is the same principle done inside the carcass of a goat or marmot, and it is a genuine event rather than a meal.

Ask your specialist to build a khorkhog into the itinerary at a camp or with a herder family. It is the single best eating experience in the country and it does not happen by accident.

Tsagaan idee, the white foods. The dairy half of the diet, and the half most visitors never engage with properly. Aaruul, dried curd, hard as stone and sour, eaten as a snack over an hour. Byaslag, a fresh pressed cheese. Orom, a thick clotted cream eaten with bread. Tarag, yoghurt. If you are offered a bowl of these on arrival at a ger, taking something from it is the polite move even if you only take a little.

What to drink

Suutei tsai, milk tea with salt. This is the default drink, offered constantly, and it is closer to a thin broth than to tea. Most visitors need two or three attempts before it makes sense. It is genuinely good on a cold morning.

Airag, fermented mare’s milk. Slightly fizzy, sour, mildly alcoholic, and a real part of summer life on the steppe. It is offered often and it is an acquired taste that not everybody acquires. Taking a small sip and passing it back with both hands is entirely acceptable. Nobody is offended by a polite refusal.

Vodka. Widely drunk, and Mongolian vodka is decent and cheap. Hospitality in a ger frequently involves it and the ritual matters: the bowl is passed, you take it with your right hand, you may touch it to your lips and hand it back.

Beer. Good local lagers, and a growing craft scene in Ulaanbaatar.

Camp food, which is the honest part

Most of your meals will be at ger camps, and camp cooking is simple and repetitive: mutton, noodles, potatoes, carrots, a soup, some dumplings, and a salad of shredded cabbage. Breakfast is eggs, bread, jam and milk tea, with pancakes on a good day.

It is clean, it is hot, it is filling and it does not vary much across a two-week route. This is not a failure of any individual camp. It is what is available at the end of a supply chain that is several hundred miles long over tracks.

Three practical responses:

1. Tell us about dietary needs early, so we can brief camps in advance rather than having a conversation at seven in the evening in the middle of the Gobi.
2. Bring snacks you actually like. Nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, whatever you would want on day nine. This is genuine advice rather than a hedge.
3. Build in the set pieces. A khorkhog, a herder family meal, a market morning. These are the meals people remember and they are arranged rather than encountered.

Vegetarians and vegans

Vegetarian is a limitation rather than a problem. Mongolian camp cooking is built around mutton, and the vegetarian version of tsuivan is noodles, onion, carrot and potato. Camps manage it with notice. It will be monotonous by day eight and we would rather say so.

Vegan is harder, because dairy is the other half of the diet. It is workable at good camps and in Ulaanbaatar, and it takes advance briefing on every night of the route.

Ulaanbaatar itself is much easier in both cases: the city has a genuine vegetarian and vegan scene, including several long-established Buddhist-influenced restaurants.

Eating well in Ulaanbaatar

The capital is where the food gets interesting, and it is worth planning two dinners there rather than treating the city as a transit stop.

• Modern Mongolian kitchens doing lamb, game and dairy with technique. There are several now and they are the best eating in the country.
• Korean food, which is everywhere and often excellent, reflecting long-standing ties between the two countries.
• Russian and Central Asian, including proper dumplings and good bread.
• Cafés and bakeries that would not be out of place in a European city, which surprises people arriving from the countryside.
• The State Department Store food hall for aaruul, dried meat, local honey and sea buckthorn juice, which is the drink to bring home.

Ask your guide where they eat rather than where they think you want to eat. The answer is usually better.

The honest note: what is overrated

Boodog for its own sake. Marmot boodog in particular. It is a genuine tradition and it is also occasionally offered as a spectacle for visitors. If you want it, ask for it with a herder family who were doing it anyway.

The idea of a Mongolian barbecue. The stir-fry restaurant concept sold under that name in other countries has essentially nothing to do with Mongolian food. You will not find it here and you should not look for it.

Expensive hotel restaurants outside the capital. In most of the countryside the good camp and the simple camp are cooking the same tsuivan from the same supply chain.

Plan this trip

Tell us how you eat and we will brief every camp on your route before you arrive, and build in a khorkhog and a couple of proper Ulaanbaatar dinners. Free first outline from one of our Southeast and Central Asia specialists.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Mongolia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Mongolia for the first time
• The Gobi in detail
• What does a trip to Mongolia really cost?
• Boutique ger camps in 10 days
• All our Mongolia trips

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