Tibetan Meat Consumption

Tibetan Meat Consumption

　　Meat

　　Meat is one of the staple foods of Tibetan herders. Tibetan people primarily eat beef and mutton, occasionally also game meat. They generally do not eat horse, donkey, or other odd-toed ungulate meats, nor do they consume fish, shrimp, or poultry. When eating meat, large chunks of beef or mutton are placed in a pot, water is added along with an appropriate amount of salt, and the meat is boiled to around five to six degrees of doneness — that is, when the meat still contains some blood — then it is taken out and placed in a bowl. When eating, a piece of meat is picked up by hand and cut with a personal Tibetan knife. The meat is cooked but remains tender, rich yet not greasy, and deliciously fresh. This way of eating is commonly referred to as “hand-pulled meat.”

　　Tibetans do not like their meat overcooked. Elderly people with missing teeth usually also prefer not to have their meat cooked too long, and they mostly rely on sharp knives to cut and eat the meat. In some Tibetan regions, cattle and sheep are generally not slaughtered with knives but are instead bound by the mouth and suffocated to death. They consider it cruel to slaughter animals by bleeding them with a knife. After the animal dies, a roughly 10 cm incision is made near the sternum at the center of the abdominal cavity. A hand is inserted into the chest cavity of the cow or sheep to sever the blood vessels, allowing the blood — approximately 20–30% — to flow into the chest cavity. Then the animal is skinned, the chest cavity is opened to remove the heart, lungs, and blood, and the abdominal cavity is opened to take out the intestines and stomach. After slaughtering the cattle or sheep, the first things eaten are various types of sausages, mainly including blood sausage, meat sausage, and liver sausage.