YouTube channel ArtGer serves up Mongolian food and culture like you’ve never seen before
- Nargie’s Mongolian Cuisine, the flagship show hosted by Naranbaatar Tsambakhorloo, takes viewers on a culinary tour of the Asian nation
- Dishes such as boodog, or ‘cooking a goat inside of itself’, are presented with warmth, relish and a lot of offal
On March 7, a package arrived at Javkhlantugs Ragchaasuren’s office in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Inside was a congratulatory plaque from YouTube: his channel, ArtGer, had surpassed the 100,000 subscribers mark.
The milestone is a commendable achievement for any new media platform, but for a channel dedicated to sharing the relatively unknown culture of Mongolia, it was a triumph. Yet it was perhaps not a surprise considering ArtGer’s flagship programme, Nargie’s Mongolian Cuisine, is one of the most engaging yet bizarre food shows on any medium – anywhere.
In each episode, Nargie, whose full name is Naranbaatar Tsambakhorloo, travels to a region of Mongolia, meets someone who is known for being a good cook – often a shepherd or an elderly matriarch – then watches them prepare a local speciality, shares a table with the family and eats with relish. It is the kind of show that has been done and done again, in every possible iteration and language. And yet, Nargie’s is unlike anything you have ever seen.
Most meals begin with a slaughter; entrails, blood and chunks of animal fat are common ingredients, while the vegetables and spices used are mostly unheard of. The cooking is done over a stove in a ger, the traditional nomadic tent that many Mongolians still use as homes, or over hot rocks under the unending blue skies of the country’s rolling grasslands.
Stocky, bearded and exuding a constant preternatural enthusiasm, Nargie delivers his direct-to-camera commentary with the zeal of a seasoned television host. But whereas Julia Child may have looked straight at viewers to extol the fragrance of a roasting chicken, Nargie is more likely to say something like, “This paunch is well cleaned.”
The backdrops, the extremity of the cooking scenes and the foreignness of the ingredients can make Nargie’s seem almost like a parody of a traditional food show: blood, raw fat, scorched hair and offal in all their fresh, slick glory lend the programme an over-the-top, otherworldly quality. You may even forget you are watching a cookery show until you see the happy faces chowing down and, against all the odds, stand up from your computer screen feeling famished; haunted by a craving for a food you’ve never tasted, a craving that, unless you live in Mongolia, could be impossible to satisfy.