Visit a nomadic family’s yurt out on the Mongolian steppes, you’ll almost certainly be offered cheese with bread or biscuits and tea. Forget about brie or cheddar; the Mongolian stuff is as hard as the people who survive on it.

The big ball at left is cheese; the small bowls hold yellow butter or milky tea.

In summer 2017 we took our then two year old on an eight day camping expedition in far west Mongolia. The trip included some memorable visits to local herder families and, at one yurt, an impromptu lesson in cheesemaking, steppe-style.

Yurts beneath a big Mongolian sky.
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Western Mongolia is a long, long way from Ulan Bator, a city which itself is far from the center of things (although only a two hour flight from Beijing). Self-reliance is the key to living out on the steppe. Of course, these days there are some modern comforts – motor vehicles, solar panels – but the basics of yurt life seemed, to me at least, not to have changed too much over the years.

These families retire to the countryside each summer to graze animals, and their children come back from the nearby towns or villages where they attend school during the rest of the year.

This life is obviously a lot of hard work for everyone from matriarch down to small child. But there seemed also to be a strong family spirit and happy-go-lucky lifestyle, at least for the kids. They certainly found time to play with our little daughter, despite no common language.

The matriarch of the family showed us – or more accurately, carried out without noticing our presence – the process to make cheese. It starts with milk, of course. Out by the yurts, someone had built a small enclosure and there the older girls milked the cows in the early evening.

The milk is added to some existing yoghurt culture and then it’s churned in a large, very clean leather bag. Everyone joins in, though the duty tends to fall mostly to the children.

You’ll need a hot fire with plenty of wood. Here’s one I prepared earlier.
This stove kept the yurt lovely and warm
Grandma took the bubbling stuff to start the process
Y & W had a go at churning the mixture inside a skillfully made leather bag. It was quite hard work.
Here Grandma drains off the excess from the soon-to-be-cheese while the kids keep churning in the background
The cheese is hung up inside the yurt at first

When the time comes, the cheese is taken from its cheesecloth – still showing the indentations left by the material – and placed on an elevated rack protected by mesh. Here it sits for about a week before it’s ready to eat, or store away, to be pulled out when guests arrive.

Grandma takes the cheeses from the immaculate wrapper and hands them to the young woman who puts them on the rack
The cheeses sit out here for about a week.
The cheese rack stood between the two yurts, set at about head height.
Later, even the smallest visitors will be offered a hunk of cheese as a welcome to the yurt.

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