Boodog - Боодог

Marmot or goat, cooked with hot stones in the stomach.

Next to Khorkhog, the cuisine of Mongolia knows a second recipe that uses hot stones for cooking. Boodog uses a similar cooking method, except that the meat isn't cut into pieces. The stones are instead filled into the stomach of the animal, which gets cooked within its own skin.

Preparation

Hang a marmot or a goat at the head, and cut the skin around its neck. Now it is possible to pull the skin and most of the meat down over the inner skeleton. Break the legs at the knee, so that you only need to pull out the upper leg bones. From the innards, keep the liver and kidneys, which can later be inserted again.

Turn the removed skin and meat back, so that the hair is at the outside again. Fill the resulting "sack" with the following ingredients: Some salt, one or two peeled onions, and a number of stones, that have been heated up in a fire for about an hour. The stones must have a smooth and round surface. The smaller ones go into the upper legs, the larger ones into the abdominal cavity. At the end, the neck is closed with a piece of wire.

Now you need a strong flame (eg. a blowtorch) to burn away the fur. Then scratch the remains off together with the uppermost layer of the skin. During that process, the meat gets cooked from the inside and the outside. If the steam forming inside causes too much pressure, then you need to cut a few small holes into the skin to avoid an explosion. The meat is cooked enough when all of the skin surface leaks with fat.