Tag: Tibetan Cuisine

Tibetan Food and Cuisine A good number of travellers presume that Tibetan food and cuisine is vegetarian. Yet in many areas certain green vegetables common in Chinese cooking are, in fact, relatively new. While wild mushrooms, wild vegetables, and a type of tiny wild yam are foraged or gathered, historically speaking. The diet of the Tibetan highlands is one heavy in meat and dairy. At 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), the average altitude of the Tibetan plateau limits both the growing period and the diversity of crops. Today, with the construction of greenhouses, roads, and passes. One can readily find hot weather loving fruits, such as tomatoes and bananas, in many cities or towns. More rural farming areas, however, are limited by the altitude to root crops such as radishes, turnips, potatoes, and garlic. In some lower altitudes, apples, walnuts, and apricots as well as some types of bak choi are common. The alternating landscape of lowland valleys and high grasslands has not only been a longtime determining factor in diet, but a driving force in regional trade and commerce as well. To this day, nomads still make trips down the mountains (and vice versa) to sell or trade butter and yogurt for that quintessential Tibetan staple food: barley. A low temperature limits Tibetan Food and Cuisine. Tibetan Staple Food: Tsampa རྩམ་པ། Tsampa, pronounced with a ‘ts’ sound similar to that of ‘tsunami’, is the Tibetan name for barley flour. People have been cultivating barley on the Tibetan plateau for hundreds of years—a practice that emerged independently of barley cultivation in Europe. Barley is planted in March and harvested in August. It is then roasted and taken to mill. Traditional, stone powered, water mills are still widely used in farming villages across the Tibetan Plateau. It is here that the barley is ground into the fine powder eaten by