Khuushuur!

After receiving our package from Mongolia, we decided to learn even more about the culture, focusing on something we all love at Tumbleweeds... FOOD! After looking at various traditional Mongolian dishes, I found one that is very common in Mongolia, a kind of dumpling called Khuushuur. Traditionally Khuushuur is filled with meat, however, since we are a vegetarian school, we decided to fill ours with delicious veggies, coming mostly from our garden.

We began by harvesting potatoes, beets, and carrots:

The preschools dug with their fingers and hands, feeling around for German Butterballs and French Fingerlings.

It was then time to cook the vegetables and cut them, as well as make the dough for the Khuushuur. Butter knives were set out at three spots at the table along with the bowl full of cool vegetables. While some preschoolers were cutting vegetables, others were working on making the dough.

For the dough, we mixed flour, water, and a small amount of salt together, until the dough just stuck together, without being sticky. Here is the recipe:

4 cups flour

2-3 cups water

1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients together to create a pliable dough. Then break dough into smaller pieces to be rolled out. We did this part by hand.

A small amount of flour was put on each spot at the table, and each preschooler had a small amount of dough to work with. They patted it, pulled it, pounded it, and stretched it to make large circles to put veggies in. The vegetable mixture was made up of steamed beets, carrots, and potatoes, and sauteed onions and garlic. A bit of garlic salt, pepper, and italian seasoning was also added to the veggies.

The preschoolers placed a small amount of veggies in each of their rolled out pieces of dough, then pinched the edges together using their fingertips. Then it was time for cooking!