Sakha cuisine () encompasses the customary and traditional

cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...

techniques and

culinary arts Culinary arts are the cuisine arts of food preparation, cooking, and presentation of food, usually in the form of meals. People working in this field – especially in establishments such as restaurants – are commonly called chefs or ...

of Sakha.

Food availability

Sakha cuisine is influenced by the area's northern climate and the traditional

pastoral The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...

lifestyle of the Sakha people, as well as

Russian cuisine Russian cuisine is a collection of the different dishes and cooking traditions of the Russians, Russian people as well as a list of culinary products popular in Russia, with most names being known since pre-Soviet times, coming from all kinds ...

. Sakha cuisine generally relies heavily on

dairy products Dairy products or milk products are food products made from (or containing) milk. The most common dairy animals are cow, water buffalo, goat, nanny goat, and Sheep, ewe. Dairy products include common grocery store food around the world such as y ...

meat Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

, and foraged goods. Food is generally prepared through boiling (meat, fish), fermentation (kumis, suorat), or freezing (meat, fish).

Dishes

One of the best-known Sakha dishes is ''

stroganina file:Dish Stroganina .jpg, 300px, Prepared ''stroganina'' on a table ''Stroganina'' () is a Dish (food), dish of the northern Russians and Indigenous peoples of Siberia, indigenous people of northern Arctic Siberia consisting of raw, thin, long- ...

'', thin slices of raw, frozen fish. However, ''stroganina'' is also prepared using foal meat and liver. This is eaten with a spicy seasoning from a flask. Another popular fish dish is ''indigirka'', consisting of frozen fish cubes seasoned with onions, salt, pepper, and more. Milk is drunk and also used to make butter, curds, and a thick yogurt called ''

suorat ''Suorat'' (, ''suorat'') is a thick, Sakha yogurt which was traditionally the most common summer food in Sakha. By itself, it tastes of buttermilk, but various foraged products such as bilberries, sapwood, and roots were also added, in addition ...

''. A popular dish is ''khaan'', a type of

blood sausage A blood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filler until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Most commonly, the blood of pigs, sheep, lamb, cow, chicken, or goose is used. In Europe and the ...

made from horse or beef blood and intestines.

Kumis ''Kumis'' ( , ), alternatively spelled ''coumis'' or ''kumyz'', also known as ''airag'' ( ), is a traditional Fermented milk products, fermented dairy product made from mare milk. The drink is important to the peoples of the Central and East ...

, a fermented alcoholic drink made from mare's milk, is widely drunk among the Sakha. One of the most popular desserts is ''kierchekh'', a sweet dish made with cream, berries, and sugar, to which milk can also be added.

History

Although cows could be milked only during the beginning of summer, dairy products historically made up the most important part of the Sakha people's diet. In addition to drinking milk, the Sakha also used it to make butter, curds, kumis, and ''

''. Meat, which was prepared boiled and without salt, was a luxury and usually reserved for feasts. Only sick animals were slaughtered and it was often consumed ceremonially. The Sakha also relied heavily on foraged goods. Traditionally, the Sakha ate pine sapwood, which was ground and then mixed with milk to form a sort of flour. Women gathered wild onions, berries, wild garlic, lilies, and various roots. Russian brought with it bread, sugar, tea, vodka, and cultivated grains. Mushrooms were consumed as food only after the arrival of the Russians, being previously used for only hallucinogenic purposes. Sakha chef Innokenti Tarbakhov ( Иннокентий Тарбахов) started collecting and promoting traditional recipes and foods as early as the 1960s and has published numerous books on the subject. He's also said to have developed the famous Indigirka salad with frozen fish cut in cubes and dressed with salt, pepper and onion, with caviar topping on a special occasion.

References

Yakuts Russian cuisine Cuisine by ethnicity Siberian cuisine {{Siberia-cuisine-stub