Shuyan's Journey: Tibetan Food Part 3

Weeks ago, I talked a lot about Tibetan food, I talked about Tsampa, Tibetan sweet tea, Tibetan dumplings and Tibetan noodles. There is one thing I forgot to mention, Tibetans are not vegetarians and meat is also their staple food. Animal husbandry is flourishing in Tibet, so the Tibetan eat their herds. Their two major animals are sheep and yak. Since sheep is a very normal animal I want to talk more about the yak.

Yak is special animal, which only lives on the altitude more than 3500 meters (11,483 ft.). It is a kind of cattle; unlike the other cattle, which live on a plain, yak has a very long hair. Black hair is the major color of yak, white hair yaks is very rare. Many tourists think white yak looks adorable, so Tibetans capture white yaks to rent them to the tourists and let them take picture with the white yaks. The black yak is for eating，transportation or some agricultural use. The meat of yak is very delicious and has special flavor. One of the popular cooking methods is the air-dried meat. To make that kind of meat, Tibetans will boil the meat and spices, and after the meat will be dried on the air to dehydrate it. This kind of cooking method can preserve the meat for longer time without a refrigerator. Tibetans also drink the yak milk and use that to make Tibetan butter and Tibetan yogurt. Every year at the beginning of July, Tibetans will celebrate a festival called Sho Dun, which is a festival about eating yak yogurt.