Friday, September 12, 2008

Only in Mongolia: Marmot Boodog

This fine Mongolian recipe come to us via e-mongole.com which we reached through Odious and Peculiar which we reached via Querencia.

Yes, yes, surfs up .... even in Mongolia.

With the opening of a marmot-hunting season, Marmot Boodog becomes a very popular and fun outdoor activity for Mongolians, especially men. Marmot hunting and boodog cooking is a prerogative of men. A freshly killed marmot is separated from intestines and cleaned. Then, a prepared marmot is filled with preheated hot stones and tightly sealed. The marmot meat is cooked by the heat of stones from inside. Additional heating is provided by open fire or gas burner. The same amount of precaution as described above must be used for handling the marmot cooking process. When done, the marmot meat is very tender and tastes like wild duck according to some foreigners.

Ingredients (5 servings):
1 medium marmot
Salt

Cooking gear:
From small to medium sized smooth stones
Firewood

Cooking time:
Approximately 1.5 hours

Clean the marmot, separate the intestines and slightly remove hair from the skin. Rub the inside with salt, fill up with hot stones and seal tightly. Additionally, roast the marmot on slow open fire or with a gas burner. Usually, Mongolians do not use seasonings in order to keep the specific taste of marmot meat. When the cooking is done, the stones are pulled out, rolled in hands, the meat is cut into pieces and served hot.
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2 comments:

Christopher said...

Tossing the stones back and forth in your hands after cooking is believed to have a therapeutic effect.

Andrew Campbell said...

It's also fairly common for the marmot to be blowtorched to get rid of the fur. One serious challenge, though, has been the prevalence of bubonic plague amongst various local marmot populations.

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