Cuisine in Ladakh

Many of the ingredients used in the local cuisine of Ladakh in northern India will be familiar to people from many parts of the world - beans; beetroots, potatoes and pumpkins for example. The most commonly-used meats in Ladakh's cuisine are chicken and mutton although goat meat is also consumed in some places.

Most dishes of Ladakh’s cuisine is quite mild and very nourishing, often accompanied by hot sauces with which to spice them up if you so wish. Momos, the traditional steamed dumplings, stuffed with meat or vegetables are typically served with a very hot chili sauce. Thalis can be found in Ladakh cuisine as they can everywhere in India and the same is true of Samosas.

Gur-gur or yak butter tea is something you don’t find in many places, so this is your chance to try it, although ordinary salted butter is also used these days!

The rich and thick vegetable soup known as Thupka is a wonderfully warming dish with noodles in it and remarkably filling so that you may not have room for anything else once you have had some.

Local bread is delicious whether you are eating it with soup or spreading local apricot jam on it for breakfast. Ladakh cuisine is tasty. Ladakh cuisine is healthy and rich as well.

Of course the chefs in some of the grander hotels will cook dishes from other countries in order to please guests but it seems a shame to travel to a new country and then eat the same food one has tried elsewhere in preference to enjoying the Ladakh cuisine that is favored by locals.

There are wonderful ‘curries’ to be had all over the region although, of course, in India’s cuisine, including that of Ladakh cuisine, there is actually no such thing as ‘a curry’, that being a term coined by foreigners to describe the spicy foods that abound all over the country and now the world. Traditional chapattis are as common here as they are all over India and town restaurants also offer cuisine from Indonesia, China and Tibet, for example, or you may prefer a pizza. It is rumored that there is even a German restaurant in Leh, the capital!

Ladakh cuisine is famed throughout India for sweetmeats and candies and is also becoming famous for products such as Seabuckthorn berry juice which is the nectar of the wild Seabuckthorn berry - only able to grow in very few places including Ladakh thanks to the high altitude there. This drink is said to have marvelous health-giving properties and locals also produce jams and other produce from the berries.