Borts facts for kids

Borts (pronounced like "borts") is a special kind of air-dried meat from Mongolia. It's made by cutting meat into long strips and letting it dry naturally in the shade. This way of preserving meat was created because of the Mongolian nomadic lifestyle and the unique weather in Mongolia. Air-drying, or 'bortsloh', is the most common method.

How Borts is Made

To make borts, fresh meat is cut into long, thin strips, usually about 2-3 centimeters thick and 5-7 centimeters wide. These strips are then hung on strings, often under the roof of a ger (yurt) (a traditional Mongolian tent). This allows air to flow all around the meat.

After about a month, the meat becomes very dry and hard, almost like small, brown wooden sticks. This drying process makes the meat much smaller in size. Once dried, the borts can be broken into small pieces or even ground into a coarse, stringy powder. It's usually kept in a linen bag, which lets air reach it. In Mongolia's dry climate, borts can stay good for many months, or even years!

Today, you can also buy borts made in factories, sold in paper bags. This is super handy for people living in cities who don't have a ger to dry their own meat. However, some people who follow traditional ways say that homemade borts tastes much better than the store-bought kind.

Borts is known for being very nutritious and is often said to be tastier than many modern field rations (food for people on long trips). There's an old story that Mongolian nobles used borts for journeys that lasted many months. They would dry the meat carefully for three years, then grind it into a super fine powder that could fit through a sieve. This made the borts even smaller, so much so that all the meat from a whole cow could supposedly fit into a cow's bladder! It's said that just a tiny pinch of this specially prepared borts could nourish 3-4 people if added to a soup.

Images for kids

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  A robot illustration, often used in kids' encyclopedias.