What we ate in Mongolia

Honestly, I was a bit worried about food in Mongolia. Many travellers report that they had difficulties in finding supplies and soon got fed up by the meat and dairy heavy options available in restaurants.
After a bit more than 3 weeks, I can happily say that all our worries were unnecessary.
As we're usually following a rather vegetarian diet, we simply cooked ourselves most of the times.
Fresh fruit and veggies are indeed hard to come by (it seems like only carrots, cabbage, onions and potatoes are being grown here, everything else needs to be imported), hence we used canned and pickled vegetables that we found even in smaller towns and villages along the way.
Mini and super markets always offered a few canned veggies, noodles, rice, tomato sauce, vodka, beer, juice, sweets (lots of candy!), tea and other random goods. Definitely enough to put together a decent meal. I bought bananas once and apples twice and every now and then got a few onions, carrots and potatoes. In one store I also found fresh ginger that I couldn't resist. If you wanted to, you could stock up on fresh goods much more often though!
The few times we ate out, we tried traditional Mongolian dishes like Khuushuur (fried pancakes filled with meat, but I even got a vegetarian one with potatoes and capsicum in it once), Buuz (steamed dumplings filled with meat, dripping with oil when you bite in them) and stir fried noodles with mutton pieces. I actually grew fond of Khuushuur, though it might not be your healthiest food.
Fresh milk and the local cheese might take some more time to get used to, we mostly avoided it. Tom used pasteurized milk as usual and I used the plant based options I stocked up on in Russia. However, we did taste everything offered to us and Tom ate the cheese with bread (I couldn't handle much more than a small piece).
In cold eveings in the mountains we discovered the local vodka goes well with our Tasmanian blackcurrant syrup and hot water. Warms hands and bellies equally.
And of course, Tom still kept on baking bread. With hardly any firewood and crappy coal, it was quite a hazzle at times, but the outcome was always super rewarding. Both no-knead and sourdough bread featured rye or whole-wheat flour and kept us going throughout the day as welcome meal.
All in all a delicious part of the journey.Read more