You know how a horse smells? That is what the meat kind of tastes like. This taste was amplified when I ate the intestines and heart. It is considered bad luck, in Mongolian culture, to waste parts of the animal. This is why Mongolian beef tastes different than US beef. In Mongolia, when they kill an animal, they do not bleed the animal. The blood is preserved in the meat giving it a distinct taste.
At first, I was not going to try to eat the horse. Growing up in the United States, I grew up with this view about what types of animals were good to eat and were bad to eat. I used to look at this through a type of moral lens as though the eating of some animals was more moral than others. I now have rethought that assumption and now understand why people eat certain animals. It all has to do with survival and available resources. In the Peace Corps we have a saying for these types of things. The saying goes “it’s not good or bad, it’s just different.”
Trying new food and having this different experience has taught me to be open-minded. It showed me that culture and survival shape food traditions, and now I appreciate that eating different is not wrong but part of adapting to a new place.
Mongolian food in terms of preparation is very basic. Most dishes are cooked with minimal ingredients and simple techniques like boiling, steaming, frying or roasting. Often, salt, onions or wild herbs are added for flavoring. Dough for dumplings and noodles are simply made out of water and flour.
Common Cooking Methods
