One of the most beautiful countries on Earth has the worst food

It’s quite incredible when you realise there are no roads. The driver points the nose of the 4WD in a certain direction and off you go, rumbling over the vastness of the steppe, this never-ending grassy expanse barely marked by any building or tree, let alone bitumen.

You just drive and drive in Mongolia. Everyone seems to know where they’re going too, despite the lack of roads. The drivers all know where the nomadic camp is that they’re looking for. They know where the lake is, where the forest is. They just point and go.

Northern Mongolia’s “Dark Blue Pearl” … Khuvsgul Lake.Credit: Getty Images

There are a few proper roads in this awesome country. They take you around the heaving, honking capital, Ulaanbaatar. They take you a few hours away to places like Hustai National Park, all rolling plains and small hills, and Terelj, with its forests and stark rocky outcrops. Rough tracks will get you all the way to Khuvsgul, the freezing lake in Mongolia’s far north.

There are few countries as beautiful as Mongolia, something you have the chance to appreciate from the back of those 4WDs. Few nations have the sense of wild adventure that Mongolia does. Almost none have culture so unadulterated and different to anything you know.

Few nations have the sense of wild adventure that Mongolia does … Hustai National Park.Credit: Getty Images

And nowhere has worse food.

I don’t mean to be cruel here, or gratuitous. But you need to be prepared. Probably the best piece of advice I’ve ever heard in regard to travel in Mongolia is “take a sauce”. As in, tomato sauce, mayonnaise, hot sauce, barbecue sauce. It really doesn’t matter.

Just carry a bottle around with you. You need something to give the food flavour, or to mask that which already exists.

“We like to age our meat here,” a Mongolian man once told me as we stood looking at his herd of sheep. That sounds great while you’re picturing a dry-ageing fridge with slabs of Wagyu hanging from hooks. But what he means is that in Mongolia they let the animals get as old as possible before they slaughter them, to the point they’re probably frequently beaten to the punch by geriatric livestock just keeling over.

Let’s talk about classic Mongolian dishes. It’s worth pointing out right here that “Mongolian lamb” is not one of them. That was an invention of Chinese restaurants in foreign countries catering to Western palates. In actual Mongolia, Mongolian lamb is a live animal that has many good years ahead of it.

The national dish, khorkhog.Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Here’s what they do have. Khorkhog is probably the national dish. It’s referred to as “Mongolian barbecue”, but it’s not a barbecue in the form you’re probably familiar with.

To cook khorkhog, a bunch of rough cuts of mutton, sometimes goat, on the bone, are thrown into a large pot, and then the cooks chuck in some very hot rocks. The lid goes on and those hot rocks and old sheep are allowed to get to know each other for a few hours (no herbs, spices or vegetable matter necessary), and then dinner is served.

What are you drinking? Maybe airag, the national beverage: it’s fermented horse milk. This milk is traditionally squeezed from the mare and then stored in a leather bag which is strung up outside your ger (the name for yurts in Mongolia). The milk is stirred occasionally, over the course of a week or so, while it ferments and develops a sour, slightly bubbly consistency.

If you’re lucky though, you’ll be drinking vodka. This is traditionally sipped out of a communal bowl that’s passed among diners, though in modern homes you’re just as likely to get shots to yourself. Mongolian vodka is actually very good. Savour it.

Because what else is on the menu? How about marmot, freshly shot, its guts stripped out and its hair burnt off and its body cavity filled with hot rocks to cook from the inside out? That’s called boodog and it’s … interesting?

Pungent buuz dumplings, stuffed with mutton.Credit: Getty Images

You might find buuz on the table too – they’re mutton dumplings, and they’re fine if you enjoy a very strong flavour of aged sheep. Maybe there will be aaruul, milk curds that are moulded into bars and then left to dry in the sun until they’re as tender as those rocks currently stuffed inside the marmot.

But enough of this slander. The world is a vast and varied place, and it’s fair to say we all have different ideas of what constitutes great cuisine. Mongolians love their food, and I wouldn’t want to change anything about it.

So much of the attraction of travel to this great country is the full immersion – you don’t get a choice in Mongolia. You’re here, you’re in.

To eat khorkhog and drink airag in a family ger far out on the steppe, to share food with the kindest of people, to stare out the door and see just nothing for miles and miles and miles… that’s a special experience. There’s barely any other place you can do it.

So go to Mongolia. Eat the sheep. Drink the milk. Drive on the non-existent roads and glory in a unique and special place.

Just, take a sauce.