Xilingol Hand-Held Boiled Mutton 锡林郭勒手把肉
Xilingol Hand-Held Boiled Mutton is featured among the local specialties of Inner Mongolia.
Xilingol Hand-Held Boiled Mutton (锡林郭勒手把肉) is lamb or mutton on the bone, boiled with little more than salt and eaten by hand, in Xilingol League (锡林郭勒盟) in Inner Mongolia. The Xilingol League government calls hand-held meat the most distinctive and representative of traditional Mongolian foods, and a regional-government feature on the 'eight classics' (八绝) of Xilingol Mongolian cooking lists the Ujimqin (乌珠穆沁) version as the fourth.
How it is made
In the method given by the Xilingol League culture, sports and tourism bureau, the sheep is killed by reaching into the chest and pinching off an artery there, then skinned and cleaned. The carcass is cut into several pieces and put in the pot; once the water boils, a little salt and scallion go in and nothing else, and the meat is cooked only until the blood stops running.
The regional feature, published by the Inner Mongolia government and Inner Mongolia News (内蒙古新闻网), specifies meat from three-year-old sheep from Ujimqin Banner (乌珠穆沁旗). The whole animal is taken apart at the joints into pieces of about one jin (500 g) each, started in cold salted water, and simmered over medium heat for 45 minutes after the pot comes to the boil.
The sheep
The same feature explains the choice of Ujimqin sheep, a geographical-indication breed from the Ujimqin grassland in eastern Xilingol: it is large and fat-tailed, carries one more vertebra and one more rib than other sheep, and its active habits build well-developed muscle, which the writers say makes it especially suited to hand-held meat.
How it is eaten
Diners hold a piece of meat in one hand and slice from it with a knife in the other. The meat can be eaten plain, or dipped either in a small bowl of the cooking broth mixed with chopped coriander, scallion and pepper, or in a sauce of garlic, vinegar and soy sauce. The Xilingol League government describes the result as fragrant and unusually fresh and tender; the regional feature calls it juicy, with a fresh broth and rich but tender meat.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.