Corridors which were packed with students only five minutes ago are empty now. Once the lunch bell sounds everyone gets to the cafeteria pronto.
We walk in and the long tables are full of students hoeing into bowls of soup. I try joining the queue, but the head of the English teaching department presses a bowl into my hand: teachers apparently get cuts. I feel bad… I know this is the only meal some of the students will get today… but with absolutely no Mongolian there’s nothing I can do.
Grab a triangle of bread from a basket and take a seat.
My first Mongolian meal!
It’s a cloudy broth filled with cubes of potato, some tiny bits of mince, some green bits… and in the middle a large round buuz!
Finally I can try buuz! Not in it’s usual form but still!
The broth is savory without a lot of flavouring. The potato is soft without being soggy. The green stuff looks like seaweed but tastes like nothing at all. But who cares? On to the buuz!
It’s like a giant jiaozi, the wrapper extra thick and chewy. Inside is a tightly compacted ball of mince… what kind of mince I have no idea. It doesn’t taste like much, the solid texture is too dominant.
But it’s buuz! I ate something Mongolian that wasn’t sweet!
The bread is really nice in the broth, with a light rye flavour. The soup tastes very nice once soaked into it.
Overall it’s not bad. Kind of bland but not in a bad way. There is some oil floating on the top but it’s not nearly as fatty as I’ve been told it can be. Not as tasty as jiaozi but hey, this is cheap food for the masses.
Keen to see what will be on the menu tomorrow!
Rating:
Specifics: Buuz in soup, from the UBTC cafeteria in Ulaanbaatar
Buuz Soup with Bread
Corridors which were packed with students only five minutes ago are empty now. Once the lunch bell sounds everyone gets to the cafeteria pronto.
We walk in and the long tables are full of students hoeing into bowls of soup. I try joining the queue, but the head of the English teaching department presses a bowl into my hand: teachers apparently get cuts. I feel bad… I know this is the only meal some of the students will get today… but with absolutely no Mongolian there’s nothing I can do.
Grab a triangle of bread from a basket and take a seat.
My first Mongolian meal!
It’s a cloudy broth filled with cubes of potato, some tiny bits of mince, some green bits… and in the middle a large round buuz!
Finally I can try buuz! Not in it’s usual form but still!
The broth is savory without a lot of flavouring. The potato is soft without being soggy. The green stuff looks like seaweed but tastes like nothing at all. But who cares? On to the buuz!
It’s like a giant jiaozi, the wrapper extra thick and chewy. Inside is a tightly compacted ball of mince… what kind of mince I have no idea. It doesn’t taste like much, the solid texture is too dominant.
But it’s buuz! I ate something Mongolian that wasn’t sweet!
The bread is really nice in the broth, with a light rye flavour. The soup tastes very nice once soaked into it.
Overall it’s not bad. Kind of bland but not in a bad way. There is some oil floating on the top but it’s not nearly as fatty as I’ve been told it can be. Not as tasty as jiaozi but hey, this is cheap food for the masses.
Keen to see what will be on the menu tomorrow!
Rating:
Specifics: Buuz in soup, from the UBTC cafeteria in Ulaanbaatar