Chinese ethnic minority – the Kirgiz nationality mainly lives in the Kirghiz Kirgiz Autonomous Perfecture in the southwest of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Kirgiz mainly engage in animal husbandry and take as their sidelines agriculture and livestock product-processing handicrafts.

Eating

The Kirgiz mainly eat meat, milk products and wheaten food; they also like cabbage, onion and potato. Of meat, they have pot-barbecued mutton, roasted entire lamb, stewed beef and mutton, horse sausage, hand picked lamb. The best food used by Kirgiz to treat guests is “naaren” which is usually served according to the guests’ ranking. The key point of cooking is to put the lamb into the pot of water before starting the fire and the lamb thus boiled is tasty but not greasy, rare but not pappy. Herdsmen enjoy taking such mutton as dried food when they go out.

They have special foods; most precious of all is “colt” and “camel calf”, which is only served to distinguished guests to show their respect and sincerity. Of all the meat, the most fastidious is roasted entire lamb. It is cooked in the following steps: flay the slaughtered lamb, take out insides, cut off the tail and hooves and soak it in salt water before it is roasted in the heated “nang” pit. Another way is two men do the roasting on an open fire by carrying the lamb with a stick though its belly and turning it nonstop while sprinkling salty water to it. The roasting usually takes place in the night when people stand by the fire, singing and dancing.