Tibetan food

Posted by Cherry Cheng on September 15th, 2019

Nyingchi, known as “Switzerland” for Tibetans, is a prefecture-level city in the southeast Tibet. It does not only own a breathtaking scenic beauty, but also well-preserved Tibetan customs. And one of the best ways to discover a new place is through its food. Tourists are highly recommended to have a culinary trip to Nyingchi to experience a different culture.

Because of the special geographic location and the year-round temperate climate, barley becomes the most suitable grain to grow in Tibet. Tsampa, known as the most common Tibetan cuisine, is made from it. To go with Tsampa, butter is regarded as a perfect match, which is mostly extracted from raw milk of sheep or cows raised by the locals. Different from other parts of Tibet, people in Nyingchi have developed another popular culinary form of barley--barley noodles.

Even though Nyingchi has a shared a culture and culinary backbone with Tibet, which means tourists can have a taste of traditional Tibetan delicacies such as Tibetan momo, yak milk cheese, and steamed stuff buns, and too many others to count. But Nyingchi food is still characterized by its local gastronomic cuisine. In Nyinchi, you can easily find a good amount of restaurants and street vendors serving mouthwatering food. Take these following noted Nyingchi specialties as an example.

Stone bowl chicken noted as the most famous Nyingchi food enjoys a high reputation among not only tourists but also the locals. It is strewed on slow heat over long hours with the precious materials, which are usually served as Chinese traditional medicine, such as conic Gymnadenia tuber, danshen, ginshenand, Chinese angelica, and medlar. And the special way of cooking ensures that they are embedded with both rich and natural herbal flavor. Unlike many other dishes cooked in a metal pot, stone bowl chicken, as you can obviously tell from the name, is strewed in a certain kind of black chiseled concave mica, which enables all the nutrition to be well preserved and becomes the highlight of the dish.

Zangxiang pig is a traditional dish for Mosuo people in China. Different from other pigs raised with pigwash, Zangxiang pig grow up in an environment of a raising elevation up to 3,000 meters (9850 ft), where they are able to eat precious herbs exclusively produced in Nyingchi and drink fresh snow-melt water. Ancient people in Nyingchi started to prepare it in a primitive way and it is still in use today. After removing the fur, cleaning off the internal organs and bones, Nyingchi cooks rub salt and seasonings, such as Chinese pepper, all over pig’s skin. Then all we have to do is hanging it in the air waiting for it to get dried. Whatever is your preferable way of cooking it, it always has an awesome texture, and you can taste all layers .--skin, fat, and meat, in a single texture filled bite.

Souza mutton, as the name implies in Chinese, is meant to be eaten by hand with diners pulling and grabbing the meat off the bone. It is also considered as one of the most famous foods for ethnic groups in Tibet. Eating the big piece of mutton into the homemade spicy sauce is the most satisfying thing after long day travel.

Alone with the mentioned delicious dishes, you will find an unbelievable amount of other Nyingchi food court to eat at, moreover, there is also a good variety of specialties from another part of Tibet for you to choose from. And it definitely worth a couple of hours’ train ride from Lhasa.